A political scientist, however, says the rise might not be permanent and will depend on the party’s ability to come up with new topics.
If the parliamentary elections took place in mid-February, they would be won by the ruling Smer party with 36.8 percent of votes. Second would be Sieť with 10.1 percent, followed by Most-Híd with 8.6 percent, according to a telephone poll carried out between February 9 and 18 on 1,472 respondents.
Also the Christian Democratic Movement would make it to parliament with 7.3 percent, followed by SNS with 7.2 percent and the Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OĽaNO) with 6.7 percent, the SITA newswire reported.
Compared to the January poll, the preferences for SNS increased from 5.7 percent. Political scientist Miroslav Kusý attributes it to the media presence of its chairman Andrej Danko ahead of the February 7 referendum on the traditional family. According to him, the increase might not be permanent, and will depend on its ability to bring new, deeper topics.
“SNS does not have such activities at the moment,” Kusý said, as quoted by the TASR newswire.
Nevertheless, if SNS makes it into parliament in the 2016 general election, it may have a decent chance of becoming Smer’s coalition partner, Kusý said, adding that Smer would likely prefer it to the KDH.
Among the parties that would fail to make it to parliament are the Party of Hungarian Community (SMK) which would get only 4.6 percent of the vote, Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) with 4.2 percent, and the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKÚ) and NOVA with 3.1 percent each, the Polis poll suggests.
According to Kusý, NOVA and SDKÚ, the two parties with similar programmes, are in a complicated situation, with Daniel Lipšic’s party losing much of its media drive as of recently, while SDKÚ is suffering from the gradual departure of its main figures, as reported by TASR.
