THE RULING Smer party would have seven representatives in the European Parliament if the elections scheduled for Saturday, May 24, were to have taken place in early May, a poll by the Focus polling agency showed.
All other parties that would have made it into the EP would have won only one chair each: the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH), Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OĽaNO), Most-Híd, the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKÚ), Freedom and Solidarity (SaS), and the coalition of Nova, Conservative Democrats (KDS) and Civic Democrats (OKS).
The Focus poll was carried out between May 6 and May 13 on a representative sample of 1,037 respondents, the SITA newswire reported.
The poll results show that Smer would receive the support of 37 percent of voters, followed by the KDH with 9.1 percent and OĽaNO with 7.3 percent. While 6.4 percent of those polled would have voted for Most-Hid, 5.9 percent would have given their votes to SDKÚ. The Nova-KDS-OKS coalition would have received 5.6 percent of the vote, while SaS would have barely made it into the EP with 5.1 percent.
“As for the preferences of individual political parties and movements, they are very difficult to estimate, because the turnout is expected to be very low, which means that only a relatively low number of respondents in the poll answered the question of whom they would vote for in the elections,” Focus director Martin Slosiarik said, as quoted by SITA, adding that only the answers of those respondents who said they are certain or likely to vote in the elections were used in the poll, which was only 38.2 percent of those polled.
Based on the declarations of the respondents suveyed in the poll, Focus estimates that election turnout will be between 16 and 21 percent.
Slovakia is known for its low turnout numbers in EP elections. In the two previous votes, held in 2004 and 2009, the turnout failed to exceed 20 percent.
Source: SITA
Compiled by Michaela Terenzani from press reports.
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information
presented in its Flash News postings.
