Incumbent President Ivan Gašparovič is estimated to have collected the most votes in the first round of Slovakia’s presidential election, according to projections made by the Polis polling agency for the private television station TV JOJ, released shortly after the polls closed at 22:00 on March 21.
According to these poll results, Gašparovič received 51.9 percent of the votes cast followed by Iveta Radičová with 36 percent.
František Mikloško would follow with 5 percent and Zuzana Martináková would collect 4.1 percent of the votes. Milan Melník is estimated to have received votes from 1.9 percent of the voters. Dagmara Bollová and Milan Sidor are each projected to have received 0.6 percent of the votes cast, according to the SITA newswire, quoting the results released by TV JOJ.
According to a March 20 survey conducted by Polis, from 55 to 60 percent of all eligible voters were expected to go to their polling stations.
The election rules in Slovakia require a candidate in the first round to receive 50% of the votes of all eligible voters to be declared elected. For that reason, it is most likely that candidates Gašparovič and Radičová will meet head-to-head in the second election round scheduled for April 4.
