SHORT NOTES
Last polls before the election
Five polling agencies yesterday presented their last polls before the parliamentary election in Slovakia on Saturday. Three had Smer as winner, two had PS. Ako and NMS show nine parties and alliances over the electoral threshold, Ipsos and Focus eight, and Median six. Kollár's We are family seems most likely to fail. It will be interesting to see 1) how precise polls are, and 2) whether there will be any last-minute swings.
28 September, 2023\\ Slovakia – elections
Update: Heger takes over
The two platforms of the Blue coalition have already parted ways. Team Spolu has joined forces with PM Eduard Heger, who has been elected party leader. Fittingly, he left 'Ordinary People' on Facebook. The Spolu party has changed its name for the second time in just over a month and is now called Democrats. According to the Slovak Spectator, Team Dzurinda will found a new party under the name Blue - European Slovakia. To do so, they need to collect 10 000 signatures.
7 March, 2023\\ Slovakia – parties
Dzurinda with new project
Less than a week before the parliament set the date for snap election to 30 September, former PM Mikuláš Dzurinda launced his new political project, the Blue Coalition.
Technically, the party emerged through the re-registration of Miroslav Beblavý's party Spolu, which ran unsuccessfully in an electoral alliance with Progressive Slovakia in the last parliamentary elections. (This is a loophole in Slovak legislation which allows new parties to be formed without collecting the otherwise needed 10 000 signatures).
It is not yet clear who will be the list leader. Currently, there are two platforms within the Blue Coalition: Team Dzurinda and Team Spolu, led by Miroslav Kollár, an MP elected on the ballot of former president Kiska's party For the People in 2020. The latter party is well below the threshold on opinion polls.
The aim is to unite liberals and conservatives and the people behind the new inititiative are according to Sme especially interested in getting the extraparliamentary Christian Democrat KDH on board, but are also open to other small parties on the centre-right.
Photo: SME/
Jozef Jakubčo
31 January, 2023\\ Slovakia – parties
Babiš is running for president
Former PM Andrej Babiš, ANO, has announced his candidacy for the upcoming Czech presidential election. The incumbent Miloš Zeman is not eligible.
Opinion polls are not favourable. Ex-army officer Petr Pavel is in the lead. He is one of three candidates supported by Spolu.
31 October, 2022\\ Czech Republic – elections
Hungarian parties in Slovakia to merge
This weekend's party conferences in Most–Híd (Bridge) and Party of the Hungarian Community (SMK-MKP) formally confirmed their agreement to merge. The merger was announced on 23 March, 2021, and is now one step closer to realization. The new ethnic Hungarian party will be called Aliancia – Szövetség (alliance in Slovak and Hungarian).
Most–Híd was founded in 2009 by former SMK-MKP chairman Béla Bugár and his circle (MPs elected for SMK-MKP), which caused the mother party to fall below the threshold in 2010. Most–Híd won representation in 2010, 2012, and 2016, but failed in 2020 after having governed with Smer - Social Democrats and the Slovak National Party (SNS). The third party in the planned merger, Összefogás-Spolupatričnosť (team-work in Hungarian and Slovak) was founded in 2019 by former SMK–MKP elites but never crossed the threshold.
The merger is expected to make it easier for the Hungarian minority to cross the electoral threshold in the 2024 election.
22 September, 2021\\ Slovakia – parties
Fidesz quits EPP
Following a vote in the parliamentary group of the European People's Party (EPP) in the European Parliament on new rules to allow for exclusion of members, Fidesz has quit EPP.
More on Polico
3 March, 2021\\ Hungary – parties
ANO is rising again
In spring it looked as if prime minister Babiš' party ANO would lose the October election, but by the end of August it was clearly ahead of its two rivals, the electoral alliances Spolu (ODS, TOP 09, KDU-ČSL) and Pirates+Mayors and Independents (STAN).
Junior coalition partner ČSSD (social democrats) struggles to cross the electoral threshold.
22 September 2020\\ Czech Republic – opinion
New generation of social democrats in Slovakia
29 June, 2020\\ Slovakia – parties
On 29 June, former prime minister Peter Pellegrini announced his new party Voice - Social Democracy. Pellegrini and ten other newly elected members of parliament left Direction - Social Democrats (Smer-SD) earlier in June. They are collecting signatures to have the party registered over the summer. According to the party law 10,000 signatures are needed. Pellegrini was a member of Smer since 2000 (i.e. almost since the beginning), and served as an MP for the party since 2006. He became prime minister in 2018, after the demonstrations in the wake of the murder of Ján Kuciak and his fiancée forced Robert Fico to resign.
The polling bureau Focus showed Pellegrini's new party at 19 percent in June 2020 - before the party even had a name. Together the old and new social democrats get almost 30 percent.
Hlas won the joint municipal and regional elections
31 October, 2022\\ Slovakia – local and regional elections
This weekend Slovakia held its first joint regional and municipal elections. This helped increase turn-out in the regional elections, while turn-out fell slightly in the municipal elections. Of the parties, Peter Pellegrini's party Hlas (voice) finished first in both elections. In the regional elections it finished narrowly ahead of the Alliance (the merged ethnic Hungarian party). In the municipal elections, Robert Fico's Smer came in second in the mayoral contests, while the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) won more seats in the municipal assemblies. Three extra-parliamentary parties – KDH, the Alliance, and the Slovak National Party (SNS) – did better than all the parties in the government coalition. Part of the reason for this is that neither of these parties (including SaS, which has left the coalition) have much of a party organization. Right radical parties were also quite unsuccessful.
However, as usual independents constituted a majority in the municipal assemblies and a plurality (38 percent) in the regional assemblies. A majority of governors and mayors won re-election.
Petr Pavel sworn in as new Czech president
9 March, 2023\\ Czech Republic – presidential election
Retired army general Petr Pavel was sworn in as the new Czech president in a seremony at the castle today. In his inaugation speech he promised to 'return dignity, respect, and decency' to the presidency (Photo: Reuters).
Progressive Slovakia on the rise
22 September, 2023\\ Slovakia – parliamentary election
A week before the snap election in Slovakia, only three parties can be sure to cross the electoral threshold: Smer, Hlas and Progressive Slovakia. Peter Pellegrini's Hlas was the most popular party in Slovakia between October 2020 and the end of 2022, but has since been surpassed on the polls by Robert Fico's Smer and recently also by Progressive Slovakia – which is still on the rise.
However, the fate of the rest of the over-crowded Slovak centre-right is too close to call. First, four of them poll just around the threshold and even small set-backs may thus leave them without representation. We are family has polled below the threshold in two recent polls (Focus and Ipsos), probably in part due to a recent scandal involving the chairman Boris Kollár'. Igor Matovič and his Ordinary People (OĽaNO) are running as part of a formal three-party alliance this time, and will need 7 percent to win re-election (which may be difficult). Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) has also had single polls barely above the threshold, and the Christian Democrats (KDH) are close enough to the threshold that they might fail narrowly again, as they did in the previous two elections.
Second, if Progressive Slovakia continues to rise, new voters are most likely to come from other, smaller centre-right parties. In addition to the parties mentioned above, there are two other centre-right subjects that poll well below the threshold. Of these Heger's Democrats have been on the rise, while Dzurinda's project never got off the ground, even after joining forces with the resurrected Bridge (Most-Híd) party. It is likely that these voters will go to a different centre-right party once they realise that their preferred party will not make it. Alternatively, good polls in the coming week could help Democrats over the threshold. This also depends on whether Progressive Slovakia is able to convince people that the only way to defeat Smer is to vote for them. However, if Progressive Slovakia were to win, this could very well be a pyrrhic victory if the party does so at the expense of the smaller centre-right parties.
On the nationalist far right two parties have a reasonable chance to win representation: the Slovak National Party (SNS) and Republika, although both have single polls around the threshold. SNS has cooperated with Smer twice before, first between 2006 and 2010, and again between 2016 and 2020. However, to form a majority government, Fico will probably need the support of both nationalist parties as well as Hlas, but Pellegrini has refused to cooperate with Republika in government.
Swings can still be expected in the coming week, but one thing seems clear: it is going to be difficult to form a government coalition after the election.
Anywhere between five and nine parties could make it into the parliament, according to recent polls.: Ako (left), Focus (middle) and Ipsos (right).