According to the last poll ahead of the Feb. 29 general elections, for the first time, the opposition Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OLaNO) is the most popular party in Slovakia, after 15 years of polls dominated by the government Smer-Social Democracy (Smer-SD).
In a new poll conducted by AKO and Focus agencies, 19.1 percent of voters supported OLaNO.
Billing itself an anti-corruption movement, OLaN, led by Igor Matovič, would thus be able to form a government with majority support in the Slovak Parliament, along with at least three other opposition or non-parliamentary movements, which have aligned themselves against ex-Prime Minister Robert Fico’s Smer-SD.
Smer-SD, led by Peter Pellegrini, the current prime minister and deputy chairman of the party, received 15.6 percent of voter support.
In Slovakia, the popularity of Social Democrats has been declining for a long time. In the 2012 elections, the party received 44.4 percent of the vote, while four years ago, its scored 28.28 percent in elections.
Moreover, according to the latest poll, the Slovak National Party (SNS) and Most-Híd, both the current coalition partners of Smer-SD, would not make it into the parliament either.
The far-right Kotlebists ranked third with 9.8-percent support. With a result of 8 percent, the party became the biggest surprise of the previous general elections in 2016.
This time, a total of seven parties, movements and coalitions would make it into the parliament according to the poll conducted by AKO and Focus among 2,000 respondents from Feb. 20 to 24.
The coalition of the now non-parliamentary parties, Progressive Slovakia (PS) and Together with 9.4 percent support, the opposition party We Are Family (7.2 percent), Freedom and Solidarity (7 percent) and the new For the People party of ex-President Andrej Kiska (6.6 percent) would also reach the 5-percent threshold.
Compared to previous polls, in addition to Smer-SD, Kiska’s party also lost. In recent days, videos aiming to discredit the Slovak ex-president have been repeatedly leaking, pointing to land under the Tatras, which Kiska had owned but lost in a court trial.
Since mid-February, there has been a moratorium on publishing results of pre-election surveys in Slovakia, but data collection is possible.
Last year, civic initiative 50dni.sk used this option to launch a public fundraiser campaign to fund two surveys, one of them being the latest by AKO and Focus. Thanks to participating in the campaign, over 9,200 donors were entitled to receive the results of both surveys by AKO and Focus.
