The Smer party would lead with 26.4 percent of the votes (meaning 44 MPs in parliament) showing that the two big anti-corruption marches in April and June have not been reflected in the popular support for the ruling party.
Inside and outside parliament
This stems from the poll on a sample of 1,025 respondents conducted by the Focus agency between July 13 and 24, the Sme daily wrote on July 26. The survey further showed, according to the TASR newswire, that the opposition Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party would have been the preferred choice of 14.2 percent of respondents (24 seats), while the coalition Slovak National Party (SNS) came third on 10.3 percent of the votes (17 seats).
Five more parties would have made it into parliament: the opposition OĽaNO-NOVA (9.2 percent/15 seats), the extremist People's Party Our Slovakia/ĽSNS (9.1 percent/15 seats), opposition Sme Rodina / We Are Family (8.2 percent/14 seats), the non-parliamentary Christian Democratic Movement-KDH (6.3 percent/11 seats) and coalition party Most-Híd (6.2 percent/10 seats).
With the support of a mere 4 percent of voters, the ethnic-Hungarian SMK party would not have reached the 5-percent threshold necessary to gain any seats.
In total, 66.6 percent of the respondents would have gone to the polling stations, according to the poll. Around 19.2 percent of the respondents would not have voted, while 14.2 percent would not have known whom to vote for.
While the strongest opposition party SaS improved its position by one percentage point, the coalition partner SNS has been oscillating around 10 percent since the scandal surrounding its chairman, Andrej Danko.
Kotleba's position worsens
The extremist ĽSNS party fared worse by 1.8 percentage points compared to June. Social analyst Martin Slosiarik of Focus opined for Sme that the recent scandal concerning a dubious tender for the repair of the roads in the Banská Bystrica Region, where party chairman Marian Kotleba is regional governor, may be behind this decline. Another reason may be Kotleba’s procrastination over his decision to re-run for the governorship. If the three strongest rivals joined forces against him, they would beat him in preferential votes.
The current coalition would have problems forming a government, lacking five seats in parliament, while winning only 71 out of 150.
Also, the now non-parliamentary KDH would exceed the necessary limit of 5 percent and get seats in parliament, Sme wrote.
