ROBERT Fico, prime minister and official candidate of Smer, will face independent candidate Andrej Kiska in the run-off of the election based on the unofficial preliminary results released by the Statistics’ Office after the votes in 58 percent of the election precincts were counted.
The first round of the election was held on March 15 with the election precincts closing their doors at 22:00.
After counting votes from 58 percent of the total of 5,958 election precincts in Slovakia, Fico finished first with 28 percent of the votes and Kiska was second with 24.1 percent.
Two other independent candidates, Radoslav Procházka and Milan Kňažko, received 20.8 and 12.6 percent respectively based on the preliminary results.
The official candidate of the People’s Platform, Christian-Democratic MP Pavol Hrušovský, garnered the support of 3.4 percent of the voters, after Gyula Bárdos with 5.6 percent after the results of more than half of the votes were counted.
Other candidates received the following support: Helena Mezenská 2.4 percent, Ján Jurišta 0.6 percent, Ján Čarnogurský 0.6 percent, Viliam Fischer 0.5 percent, Jozef Behýl 0.5 percent, Milan Melník 0.4 percent, Jozef Šimko 0.3 percent, and Stanislav Martinčko 0.1 percent.
Preliminary results show the turnout at around 42 percent.
