Hlas party leader Peter Pellegrini. (source: TASR)
Speaker of Parliament Peter Pellegrini, who leads one of the coalition parties, Hlas, and former foreign minister and diplomat Ivan Korčok, both have a chance of winning the first round of the presidential election next month.
The first round takes place on March 23.
Pellegrini would have won the first round with 35.8 percent, Korčok with 34.6 percent, shows the latest NMS Market Research poll for the Sme daily. The difference is only minor: 1.2 percent.
Thus far, all the polls have shown that the two presidential hopefuls will make it to the second round, including the latest AKO poll for the Joj television channel published last week. But like the AKO poll, the poll for Sme also indicates growing support for Slovensko (former OĽaNO) leader and ex-premier Igor Matovič. According to the NMS poll, 6.6 percent would have voted for the ex-premier. He led the country at a time when the world was fighting the Covid-19 pandemic. Korčok then served as his foreign minister.
The NMS poll, which was carried out from February 14 to 18, asked respondents about 10 presidential candidates. However, there are 11 official candidates as of February 19.
On Monday, the Supreme Administrative Court ruled that Róbert Švec from the nationalist movement Slovenské Hnutie Obrody can also compete in the race. He became the eleventh candidate. Initially, the Office of the National Council of the Slovak Republic, which is responsible for the daily operation of the parliament and approves registration forms of all presidential candidates if all the conditions are met, rejected his registration. It argued that a thousand of the 15,209 signatures submitted by him were not handwritten. As a result, the Office said, he failed to meet the requirement of at least 15,000 signatures. But the court has decided that it’s the job of experts, not the Office, to verify signatures. The Office accepted the decision.
