How Fast Are the Websites of Czech and Slovak Political Parties?

A fast website isn't just crucial for e-commerce.

Political parties in this year's parliamentary elections have shown they understand this as well. According to PageSpeed.ONE measurements, major players such as SPOLU, ANO, Piráti, and STAN have fast and technically sound websites.

On the other hand, smaller entities often lag not only in electoral preferences but also in loading speed.

SPOLU Takes the Lead, ANO Close Second#

Among Czech political websites, the SPOLU coalition boasts the best performance, with its page loading on mobile in just 0.61 seconds.

Following are ANO (1.07 seconds) and Piráti (1.95 seconds).

Among the weaker performers are Přísaha and Motoristé sobě, with their websites loading in nearly three seconds.

Political websites today are comparable to the best commercial projects. In this regard, the creators of the SPOLU website even surpass the fastest commercial e-shop of 2024, iWant.cz.

When a party manages to optimize its website as well as its campaign, it shows.

STAČILO! Website Falls Short#

Some websites demonstrate that having only an appealing design is not enough.

The STAČILO! movement's page responded seven times slower than the SPOLU website and was often unstable during testing. It seemingly couldn't handle higher loads, which might indicate inadequate infrastructure or an overloaded server.

For voters, this means that if they wanted to read the program, they had to wait. In the web world, where every second counts, that's simply too much.

When Speed Reflects on Emissions#

Every megabyte of data transferred also means energy consumption – on servers, across networks, and in voters' mobiles.
A slow website not only harms user experience but the planet as well.

An example? The homepage of Motoristé sobě exceeds 11 MB.

If every voter visited it once a year, it would produce over half a ton of CO₂ – equivalent to brewing 78,000 cups of tea.

Slovak Political Parties Are Worse Off#

In Slovakia, the fastest websites are progresivne.sk and strana-smer.sk, both around 1.4 seconds.

On average, however, Slovak websites remain slower (2.2 seconds) than Czech ones (1.9 seconds). It appears that in the Czech Republic, website optimization became a standard part of campaigns a tad earlier.

A Fast Website as a Mark of Sophistication#

Political parties now understand that a website is not just an online bulletin board, but a service to voters that reflects on the brand and can convert into votes.

When a website loads quickly, operates reliably, and saves energy, it speaks volumes not just about the quality of the code, but also about the quality of the organization.

⬇️ Full press release.

Tags:Web Performance