The liberal, Western-oriented Progressive Slovakia led the Slovak elections on Saturday, followed by the left-wing populist opposition party Smer, an election poll showed.
Progressive Slovakia, led by former journalist and Oxford graduate Michal Šimečka, had 23.5 percent of the vote, followed by former Prime Minister Robert Fico’s Smer with 21.9 percent, according to the election poll by the Focus agency and the Markíza television channel shortly after the end The vote took place at 10:45 p.m. CET.
Due to political customs in Slovakia, the top candidate is the first to have the chance to form a majority in the 150-seat parliament.
With the country deeply polarized, this rule theoretically puts Šimečka in a good position to form a coalition for his first term as prime minister if he finds enough allies in conservative Slovakia willing to work with him and his LGBT+ platform .
Saturday’s vote is seen as crucial for Slovakia’s future, as Fico has promised to stop sending weapons to Ukraine, block Kiev’s potential NATO membership and “accept money from banks, [who] have billions.”
Fico, known for his pro-Moscow sympathies, said at a pre-election rally in his hometown of Topoľčany on August 30: “The war in Ukraine started not a year ago, but in 2014, when Ukrainian Nazis and fascists started “To murder Russians.” Citizens in Donbass and Luhansk.”
Meanwhile, Šimečka told a crowd at Progressive Slovakia’s headquarters that his party’s voters want “a dignified European future for their families and their nation, a future in which we invest in our teachers and our schools, our health workers and our hospitals can.”
Šimečka’s party’s potential partners include the OĽaNO party, which received 8 percent in the election poll; the liberal Sloboda a solidarita (Freedom and Solidarity) with 6.4 percent; and the Christian Democrats with 5.3 percent. Together with Progressive Slovakia they would get 43.2 percent of the vote, giving them 85 seats and a majority of 10 seats.
Smer’s natural partners, meanwhile, include the Social Democrats of Hlas (Vote), a breakaway from Fico’s party in 2021, which will be disappointed with its result of 12.2 percent in third place. Other possibilities include the right-wing extremist Republika with 6 percent.
No other party achieved more than 5 percent in the election survey, the minimum value for parliamentary representation.
The SNS nationalists’ failure to break the 5 percent mark – they only got 4.4 percent – could derail Fico’s bid for another term as prime minister.