After several months of stagnation, the popularity of the ruling Smer party has started to rise slightly, a September poll by the Focus agency shows. However, its results do not take into consideration the most recent revelations concerning the murders of journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée, protests connected with this and the ensuing changes in the general atmosphere.
Had a general election taken place in late September, Smer would have won with 22.4 percent of the votes, ahead of the opposition Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party with 13.5 percent and Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OĽaNO) with 10.3 percent, the Sme daily wrote on September 28.
Back in August, Focus recorded 20.7 percent of the vote for Smer. The SaS party also improved on the previous month, by 1.3 percentage points.
Fourth was determined to be the far-right Kotleba-ĽSNS party with 10 percent, followed by the junior coalition Slovak National Party (SNS) with 9.2 percent, Sme Rodina (We Are Family) 8.2 percent, the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) 5.5 percent and junior coalition partner, Most-Híd with 5.1 percent.
The new and non-parliamentary parties, Progresívne Slovensko (Progressive Slovakia, 4.4 percent), ethnic Hungarian SMK – MKP (3.1 percent) and Spolu – Civic Democracy (SPOLU – Občianska demokracia, 3.1 percent) would not achieve the necessary five-percent threshold to make it to parliament.
Other parties garnered even less support, Sme wrote.
Unable to put together a coalition
As for seats in parliament, calculated according to the recent poll, Smer would get 40 seats in parliament, the SaS 24 seats, OĽaNO and ĽSNS 18 seats each, while the SNS would have gained 16 seats, Sme Rodina 15 seats, KDH 10 seats and Most-Híd nine.
Thus, Smer, Most and SNS would not be able to form the current coalition, as they would only have 65 chairs counted together. They would need at least 11 more MPs to form a majority.
The Focus poll was made on a sample of 1,015 respondents between September 18 and 25 through personal inquiries. Respondents were asked: “If the general election took place this weekend and the following parties and movements would run, who would you give your vote to?”.
As many as 72.1 percent of the respondents would have gone to the polling stations, while 14.7 percent of the respondents would not have voted. The remaining 13.2 percent of the respondents did not know for whom they would vote, Sme reported.
