IF PARLIAMENTARY elections had been held in November, opposition party Smer would have received 45.2 percent of the votes according to a poll conducted by the Focus agency. That would have been enough to win 79 seats in the 150-member parliament, an outright majority. The poll was conducted between November 3 and November 8 and involved 1,041 respondents, the TASR newswire reported.
The second largest party in parliament, based on the poll results, would have been the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKÚ) with 11.3 percent, followed by its current coalition partners: the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) with 9.9 percent, Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) with 7.5 percent, and Most-Híd with 7 percent. The Slovak National Party (SNS) also would have passed the 5-percent threshold to enter parliament, as it had the support of 5.4 percent of the respondents.
Though the poll indicated that Smer, led by former prime minister Robert Fico, would be able to form a government entirely on its own, sociologist Martin Slosiarik told the Sme daily that polls that have delivered similar results in the past did not actually come true in elections, with Slosiarik adding that he expected SDKÚ to receive more than 11 percent of the votes in the March election.
Slosiarik noted that the poll was conducted just after the fall of the government and Prime Minister Iveta Radičová’s announcement that she would not be a candidate in March. He suggested that some SDKÚ supporters may have told the polling agency that they would not vote, but said that could change over coming months.
