Both Pavel and Babis were predicted to win considerable votes in relevant polls. They were almost neck-and-neck with 35.36 percent and 35.02 percent of the vote respectively, according to official results when ballots from over 99.7 percent of precincts were counted.
Voter turnout was over 68 percent in the first round held on Friday and Saturday, which was about six percentage points higher than that in the 2018 election.
Pavel is a retired army general and served as head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Military Committee. He is one of three candidates endorsed by the ruling coalition government.
Babis, the head of the Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO) party, is a Slovak-born businessman and one of the wealthiest Czechs. He served as prime minister from 2017 to 2021.
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