Late first-round opinion poll predicted Schuster would win big

The Markant polling agency, based on its latest 1,159-respondent poll conducted between April 30 and May 5, 1999, estimates that ruling coalition candidate Rudolf Schuster will win in the first round of the presidential elections on May 15 with 38.6% of votes, followed by the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia's (HZDS) Vladimír Mečiar, who falls 10% behind Schuster. The agency has taken into account that fact that HZDS sympathizers are the least willing to participate in opinion polls, so actual election preferences might slightly differ. Non-partisan former Slovak Ambassador to Austria Magda Vášáryová will end up third with 16.8% votes, and 10.3 % of the voters were undecided if they should vote.