Faces of Progresívne Slovensko. (source: TASR)
If the parliamentary election results were to depend only on the votes of Slovaks living abroad, the political party Progresívne Slovensko would win the race.
PS received 61.7 percent of all the votes cast by Slovaks living abroad.
Another liberal party, SaS, would follow with 10.8 percent. Smer would come third.
Except for Republika, Sme Rodina and Demokrati, all the parties got into parliament.
Up to 58,779 Slovaks abroad cast their vote in the early parliamentary election, which is 80.5 percent of registered Slovak voters from 104 countries. Initially, a total of 72,993 Slovaks expressed their interest in voting by post.
The deadline for Slovaks staying abroad having their envelopes with votes delivered to the Interior Ministry was Friday, September 29.
Most votes came from the Czech Republic, Great Britain and Germany.
Eighteen electoral division commissions began to count votes delivered from abroad by post at 18:00 on Saturday; the hour and the day are set by law. Each commission counted almost 3,300 votes. Other electoral divisions in Slovak towns are made up of about 1,000 voters.
The results regarding how Slovaks abroad voted were published on Sunday morning. When asked why it took so long, the Interior Ministry explained that votes from abroad were looked at as one electoral district with one list of candidates. If a result from at least one electoral division of those 18 divisions were published earlier than the rest, the result would make no sense.
"It could cause distrust in the results among voters," the Interior Ministry said.
Slovak citizens based abroad could vote by post in the parliamentary elections for the sixth time this year. They had the first opportunity in 2006. In the last parliamentary election in 2020, 48,925 voters voted by post.
