Slovak parliament, illustrative stock photo (source: Sme)
If a general election had taken place in early October, the senior ruling Smer party would have been the winner based on 22.2 percent of the votes, ahead of the opposition Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) at 15.5 percent and the far-right People’s Party Our Slovakia (ĽSNS) at 10.7 percent, according to an AKO agency poll released on October 9.
Smer improved by 1 percentage point since last month.
The junior coalition Slovak National Party (SNS) came fourth on 10.2 percent, followed by the opposition OĽaNO on 8.2 percent. Only three more parties would have made it to parliament: the opposition Sme Rodina (We Are Family) on 8 percent, the non-parliamentary Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) on 6.4 percent and the junior coalition Most-Híd on 6.2 percent, the Sme daily wrote.
The new parties Progresívne Slovensko (Progressive Slovakia) and Miroslav Beblavý’s Spolu (Together) would both have been under the 5-percent threshold to make it to parliament, with 4.9 percent and 3.7 percent, respectively.
The ethnic-Hungarian SMK on 2.9 percent was also under the threshold. No other party received more than 1 percent in the poll, the TASR newswire wrote.
Distribution of chairs in parliament
In terms of seats in the 150-member Parliament, Smer would have received 38, SaS 27, ĽSNS 18, SNS 17, OĽaNO and We Are Family 14 each, KDH and Most-Híd 11 each.
In total, 69.8 percent of the respondents would have gone to the polls, while 11 percent would not have voted, 18.6 percent would not have known whom to vote for and 0.6 percent did not want to express a preference, according to the survey.
The poll was carried out on a sample of 1,000 people on October 3-8.
