If parliamentary elections had been held at the end of May, Smer-SD would have won with 36 percent of the vote, according to the most recent poll by the agency MVK which took place between May 26-31 on a sample of 1,036 respondents. Smer was followed by the party Sieť (Network, 10.5 percent), the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH, 8.5 percent), Ordinary People (OLaNO, 7.4 percent), Most-Hid (7.4 percent), the Slovak National Party (SNS, 6.8 percent) and the Hungarian Community Party (SMK, 5 percent), the last party that would have got into parliament. Parties below the 5-percent threshold needed to gain seats in parliament were: Freedom and Solidarity (SaS, 3.1 percent), NOVA (2.8 percent), the Slovak Civic Coalition (SKOK! 2.2 percent) and SDKU-DS (2 percent). With such a distribution of votes, Smer would have won 66 seats, followed by Siet - 19, KDH - 16, OLaNO and Most-Hid - both 14, SNS - 12 and SMK - nine. Smer-SD would have needed to have at least one coalition partner in order to govern. The respondents answered the question: "Parliamentary elections will be held in 2016. If they were held today, who would you give your vote to?" Of those asked, 6.8 percent stated that they definitely wouldn't have taken part in an election, while 24.1 percent didn't know whether they would have taken part or didn't know whom to vote for.

Gavin Shoebridge, Photo: SITA