Smer leader Robert Fico received more than 530,000 preference votes in this year's election. (source: TASR/AP)
First came the top-line numbers: the total number of votes, the calculations to see which parties had cleared the electoral threshold percentage, and the final distribution of parliament’s 150 seats.
Observers quickly calculated that the results would allow for three or fourplausible coalitions. (At time of writing, the negotiations continue.)
Some complaints about slow overnight reporting aside, the electoral authorities maintained their sterling record and the official results were published at around lunchtime on October 1. They are publicly available, in commendably clear English and granular detail, atvolbysr.sk. The stats reveal some fascinating details.
More parties than you might think
While the official results show that six parties and one coalition (comprising three parties) were elected, there will be rather more factions represented in parliament.
That’s because it has now become commonplace for parties to offer places on their slates to candidates who are not members.
This has a respectable heritage. Take Ondrej Dostál, one of parliament’s more hard-working and effective MPs. A member of the Civic Conservative Party (OKS), a small free-market centre-right party, he was elected via preference votes from the party list of Most-Híd in 2010, and then, as a Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) candidate, in 2016, 2020 and again this year.
This can happen because voters may circle up to four candidates on the list of the party they vote for. If a candidate receives preferences from more than3 percent of the total number voting for their party, they get to jump the queue for seats that would otherwise be set by their order on the party list.
Dostál was 15th on the SaS list, which won only 11 seats, but his 17,703 preference votes were enough to move him up to 9th on the list of SaS candidates elected, meaning he will be a member of the next National Council (as parliament is officially known).
This preference voting system is a useful way of allowing voters to exercise some choice, rather than just accept the candidates offered to them by each party’s hierarchy in the form of its election slate. It is revealing to see which party’s voters choose to use that power, and how.
SaS MP Ondrej Dostál. (source: SME - Jozef Jakubčo)
Dude, where’s my party?
The Slovak National Party (SNS), which claims descent from its nineteenth-century namesake, scraped into parliament with 5.62 percent – just above the 5 percent minimum required for parties to win seats.
Its 10 seats in parliament will likely give it a place in the new government. But of those 10 MPs only one – its chairman, Andrej Danko – is actually a member of the party.
