BRATISLAVA — After winning the presidency and sweeping into the European Parliament, Slovakia's opposition is coming for the big prize.

On Saturday, when Slovaks will elect a new parliament, a loose alliance of five parties calling themselves the "democratic opposition" is hoping to unseat Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini and his Smer party. If they succeed, it would mark a political watershed for Slovakia — Smer has ruled the country for 12 of the last 14 years.

Polls say anything is possible, but the most recent survey suggests Smer is in serious trouble. The opposition alliance is currently polling at a combined 46.9 percent, while Smer has fallen to below 20 percent.

The ruling party has steadily lost support after the 2018 murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová. The killings sparked nationwide protests, which forced then-Prime Minister Robert Fico to resign and led to last year's election of anti-corruption activist Zuzana Čaputová as president.

Demonstrations in Slovakia continued last year amid rising public anger at allegations of corruption and cronyism. The investigation into the murders uncovered government employees, some close to Fico, with links to the Italian Mafia, as well as officials with ties to Marián Kočner, the millionaire businessman who has been charged with ordering the murders. (Kočner denies the allegations.)

The People's Party-Our Slovakia (L'SNS) of Marian Kotleba could become kingmaker if the opposition parties fall short of a majority.

Several of the parties now campaigning to oust Smer were founded in the wake of the protests. In last year’s European Parliament election, two of those parties, Progressive Slovakia and its coalition partner SPOLU, won a surprise victory, garnering more than 20 percent of the vote and four seats in the Parliament.

Though Smer could still surge in the final days and win the election, its share of the vote will be well below the 28 percent it received in 2016. The final polls published before Slovakia's moratorium on pre-election surveys two weeks before the election put the ruling party at about 17 percent, with the opposition party Ordinary People — one of the five in the alliance — in second place at 13-15 percent. At the time, about 20 percent of voters still said they were undecided.

The most recent poll, published by Czech Television — as it could not be published in Slovakia due to the moratorium rule — puts Ordinary People in first place at 19 percent and Smer at just 15.6 percent. Such a result would enable Ordinary People to form a majority government with the three other opposition parties likely to surpass the 5 percent threshold to enter parliament.

A broad alliance

The opposition alliance covers much of the political spectrum, from the center-right Ordinary People and the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) to the liberal Progressive Slovakia-SPOLU coalition.

If successful in the election, they will have to bridge considerable differences to form a stable government. Yet Michal Truban, chairman of Progressive Slovakia, thinks that should not be very difficult.

SLOVAKIA NATIONAL PARLIAMENT ELECTION POLL OF POLLS

For more polling data from across Europe visit POLITICO Poll of Polls.

“We all share the same goal: to get rid of Smer,” he said in an interview. “We don’t have any personal disagreements, and I would say that we could agree on about 80 percent of policies.”

However, there is a wild card in the electoral mix: The right-wing extremist The People's Party-Our Slovakia (L'SNS) of Marian Kotleba could become kingmaker if the opposition parties fall short of a majority.

That's because the Smer-led coalition is falling apart. One coalition member, the Slovak Nationalist Party (SNS), could fail to pass the 5 percent threshold. Another, the interethnic Most-Híd party, has ruled out governing with Smer again.

So the L'SNS — which is polling at around 10 percent — looks like a viable option for Smer to partner with. But Pellegrini and Fico, who remains Smer's chairman, have both declared that they would “never” form a coalition with the party, whose leader holds openly extremist views.

Kotleba is an outspoken admirer of Jozef Tiso, the head of the Slovak Nazi puppet state. He has called Roma “parasites,” referred to Jews as “devils in human skin” and in 2017 was charged with extremism for “sympathizing with a movement aiming to suppress basic rights and freedoms.” He's also fiercely opposed to the European Union and NATO.

With the decline of Smer, Slovakia’s political landscape has been transformed — perhaps for good

Among opposition politicians, however, Smer's rejection of Kotleba has been met with skepticism.

“I don’t believe anything that Smer or Pellegrini says,” Truban said. “If they’re able to form a government with Kotleba, they will. They already cooperate with him on a regional level. And in parliament, when Smer needed votes, they looked to Kotleba for support.”

During the election campaign, Smer, SNS and L’SNS together called an extraordinary session of parliament to fast-track voter-pleasing bills, such as increasing child allowances and pensions.

Truban worries Smer could cooperate with the L'SNS without entering a formal coalition with the party, taking a leaf from the playbook of Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, whose minority government remains in power thanks to the support of the Communist party, which is not a part of the government. (Smer did not respond to requests for comment.)

The power for such decisions still lies with Fico rather than Pellegrini, and some suggest that the former prime minister would rather see his party govern with the far right than risk losing power.

“He will do everything possible and impossible to stay in power," said Pavol Babos, a political scientist at Bratislava’s Comenius University, noting that an opposition victory could open the gates to investigations into alleged misconduct during Fico's tenure as prime minister. Fico's name has come up in a number of corruption scandals, though he has denied any wrongdoing.

Whatever the outcome of the election, one thing is certain: With the decline of Smer, Slovakia’s political landscape has been transformed — perhaps for good. On Saturday, for the first time in more than a decade, Slovaks will head to the polls knowing there's a real chance for change.