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Euroblindness

Serifovic

It is nice to see that my rather painful obsession with the Eurovision Song Contest (other people’s tragedies are always more palatable) has some relevance for my profession:

eurovision.png

Nice to see, too, that Slovakia will finally have an entry so that I can see who likes the Slovaks (and watch the excitement as Slovakia’s Hungarian minority votes the whole country’s 12 points for the Hungarian entry (on the odd chance that the Hungarian makes it to the final round): http://www.eurovision.tv/page/news?id=1989

Slovakia’s Presidential Election, Second Round

I have no time to day to do much analysis except to say that the weekend’s 55.5% to 45.5% is closer than I expected a year ago or even several months ago.  It means, in effect, at least 15% of the voters of the current coalition (Smer, SNS, HZDS) and opponents of the previous coalition (KSS and HZD) crossed the aisle and voted for a candidate from the previous coalition. This is even more strking to the extent that Radicova ran for president as a member of a party sharply at odds with all of the parties listed above.  Gasparovic by contrast has been able to maintain an arm’s length distance from unpopular actions by major parties, though this may have cost him as well since he lacked formal ties to party organizations.  In any case, Slovakia’s opposition has clearly been delighted by this result.  The question for me is whether the result will inspire them to compete vigorously or whether (as in the 2nd place but surprisingly strong finish of SDKU in 2006) will lead to complacency.  It would not be the first time that SDKU and its allies had failed to correctly read the electoral tea leaves.

As a side note, I realize that my epic prediction from last week actually never made it into the blog thanks to a mistake I made in formatting.  That’s just fine, but I’m happy with the form of the prediction at least and so I include it here.  I was off by about 1.2% but given what we knew, I suspect that a random guess limited by the parameters we had in front of us would have yielded an equally good guess:

  Total 1st round Share to Gasparovic in 2nd round Share to Radicova in 2nd round Total to Gasparovic
Gasparovic 46.71 1 0 46.71
Radicova 38.05 0 1 0
Miklosko 5.41 0.6 0.4 3.246
Martinakova 5.12 0.2 0.8 1.024
Melnik 2.45 0.8 0.2 1.96
Bollova 1.14 0.8 0.2 0.912
Sidor 1.11 0.8 0.2 0.888
Sum 0 0 0 54.74

And a final note.  I argue last time that if Radicova could increase Hungarian turnout she might be able to win.  She did manage to increase turnout in those places and still only picked up 6.5% overall.

First Round, Second Round

Turnout, First RoundTurnout, Second Round

The rest of the results are available on the website of Slovakia’s statistical official.  I’ll just post the pictures.  The sharpness of contrast is noteworthy, a range from 15% to 95% for Radicova, and 5% to 85% for Gasparovic.  By my rough estimation, that is quite high (as high as the difference in Ukraine in 2004, though the split is not as pervasive):

Gasparovic:

Gasparovic

Radicova:

Radicova

Life imitates Onion (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love AC/DC)

First there was the monument to Bon Scott (among other ‘died young’ rockers) in Samorin, Slovakia (http://pozorblog.wordpress.com/2008/02/07/meet-the-new-boss/).  Now we find an even more astounding tribute: “AC/DC Inspired Czech Leader’s “Road to Hell” Riff” (http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/czech/?hp).  It is hard to say which part of this story would have been more astounding in, say, March 1989: that the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic attended an AC/DC concert or that AC/DC was still touring.

Regardless, it is tempting to follow the lead of Scott Brown of “Springtime for Dubcek” (http://springtimefordubcek.wordpress.com/2009/03/27/for-those-about-to-shock-we-salute-you/) and speculate about other songs that Topolanek might have used with regard to administration policies:

  • Money Talks
  • Nervous Shakedown
  • Back in [the] Black

In general the list applies better to the Clinton adminstration.  Alas, Vaclav Klaus does not appear to have attended any in the mid-1990’s AC/DC concerts.

Presidential Election, First Round

Although the results were closer than almost anyone expected, the polls were not wildly off: only by a matter of 5-6% points and much less for the major candidates.  The closeness makes the second round interesting, though it’s much harder to see Radicova gaining 12 than Gasparovic gaining 5.

If the same voters were to turn out, it would be easy to make predictions, since we can guess fairly well about the 2nd choice preferences of voters for Martinakova, Bollova and Sidor.  For Miklosko and Melnik it is different (for related reasons):

  • Miklosko’s KDH fought bitterly with HZDS during the period when Gasparovic was the party’s chair of parliament and even though Miklosko will not back Radicova, many of his supporters may be willing to do so.  We shall see here whether past conflicts now rendered largely meaningless (ex-KDH v. ex-HZDS) will trump potentially emerging present conflicts over genuinely ideological questions (without looking more closely at the data, I would guess that Miklosko supporters are more similar to Gasparovic voters (culturally conservative, economically mixed) than to Radicova voters (economically mixed, culturally liberal).
  • Melnik’s HZDS fought bitterly after 2002 against Gasparovic and did so again in this campaign.  Here we shall see whether a current party conflict (Meciar v. Gasparovic) is stronger than a simultaneous ideological conflict (Melnik’s voters would unreservedly prefer somebody like Gasparovic over Radicova if it were not for the party ties.)  In this case I suspect ideology wins out and most Melnik voters go to Gasparovic.

This rough guess would produce something like the following.  Radicova gains more than Gasparovic but not enough to win:

Total 1st Round Share to Gasparovic in 2nd round Share to Radicova in 2nd round Total for Gasparovic Total for Radicova

Of course the same voters will not necessarily turn out and so if Radicova hopes to win, she will need a much bigger turnout in areas of her strength.  This might not actually be as hard as it seems since many of the areas of her greatest strength (particularly in the south) were in areas with rather low turnout, particularly along the country’s southern border.  Hungarians, it would appear from this aggregate data, may have supported Radicova at much higher than average levels but may have turned out in lower than average levels.  If this is true and if Radicova could mobilize Hungarian voter simply to turn out at average levels, she could come very close to Gasparovic’s totals :

Turnout

In the meantime, the daily papers have some reasonably good reportage (see: http://delicious.com/kdecay/pozorblog for articles I’ve tagged) and the Stasticky Urad has some other nice graphs and charts (see http://www.volbysr.sk).  For ease of comparision I’ve included some of the more interesting ones below.

Gasparovic’s regional totals:
Gasparovic Totals

Radicova’s  regional totals:

Radicova

Miklosko’s regional totals:

Regions “won” by Gasparovic versus those “won” by Radicova

Gasparovic v. Radicova

Money in Politics

As far as I can tell there are no odds markets like http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem/, http://www.intrade.com for Slovakia’s politics, but there are more traditional bookies that sometimes deal in politics.  In 2006 Tipos (http://ekurz.etip.sk) dabbled in parliamentary odds, but did a rather poor job such that straight betting on the poll averages allowed would-be-bettors to make money (http://www.pozorblog.com/?p=18).  Now Nike (http://www2.nike.sk/index.php?cmd=sk/info/clanky/full-section/4480) has entered the fray with a presidential option.  This is probably a no-brainer since the election outcome is unlikely to change from current polls putting Gasparovic ahead, and betting on him at 1.2:1 would probably yield less than the transaction costs.  Still, I’ll try to follow these numbers and see if they change on a daily basis.  Here are the current odds:

Gasparovic, 1.2:1
Radicova, 3.5:1
Martinakova, 100:1
Miklosko, 120:1
Melnik, 800:1
Bollova, 900:1
Sidor: 1000:1

What makes the difference between Melnik’s 800 and Sidor’s 1000 is a curiosity, but I suppose if everybody other than Radicova was 500:1 it wouldn’t seem very interesting for the bettors.

2009 Presidential Election, First week of March

 I should probably post something on the presidential election campaign in Slovakia, though there is not much to say, both because the race has been extremely stable and because I simply have not been able to find much polling.  FOCUS has not yet offered numbers and UVVM only started this month (as far as I can tell) and so we’ve only got irregularly and incompletely reported numbers from MVK.  Still, that is something.  The race as we know it appears below.  Gasparovic has consistently led the field, hovering around 50% in every poll except a very early one in 2007 that included likely competitors from the Slovak national bloc (Meciar and Slota).  Radicova, by contrast has hovered around 35% (except in that first poll at a time when she had less name recognition).  Other candidates have gone and come, but Martinakova of Slobodne Forum appears to have a solid 5% and Miklosko of KDS just a bit less.  At the bottom comes the trio of Bollova (former KSS), Sidor (KSS) and Melnik (HZDS) with 2% or less.

Poll results for Presidential Candidates, Full Field, in Slovakia, 2009

Comparing these candidates with their party results is not always easy or useful but it does lend certain insight into the underlying dynamics of the country’s politics.  Gasparovic has polled 50% when his own former party HZD has languished below 2%. Clearly Gasparovic gains most of his support from Smer and SNS (though he slightly underpolls the combined strength of those two parties).  Gasparovic may also gain some support from voters of his previous former party, HZDS.  This is mitigated to some degree by HZDS chair Vladimir Meciar’s idiosyncratic campaign against Gasparovic, whom he regards as a traitor to his party, but while this campaign may cost Gasparovic some votes, it certainly has not been successful in luring voters to HZDS’s own candidate, Melnik, who stands at 2%, less than a third of HZDS’s 6% (and it shows HZDS’s continued decline).  Bollova and Sidor together attract more votes than KSS, but only by about a half of a percentage point, so it does not seem that these alternatives on the statist left draw many voters away from Gasparovic.

Perhaps the most interesting question is on the right.  The parties of the right (including the Hungarians) consistently poll about 35%, about equal to Radicova’s total, but Radicova likely shares the vote of that bloc with Martinakova and Miklosko who together poll around 10%.  This means that either Radicova or the other two (or all three) pull some voters from uncommitted voters.  Martinakova outpolls her party by about 3-4%) and Miklosko’s party has only about 1% in the polls, so virtually all of his vote comes from partisans of other parties.  It is difficult without the actual data to assess the ebb and flow here, but it would appear that the presidential candidates of the right-wing parties are, by a solid margin, more popular than the parties themselves, and this suggests some room for growth on the right side of the political spectrum (but only if those parties were to seek out new leadership, something that KDH and SMK–but not SDKU–may currently be thinking about).

The potential gain becomes most obvious in those polls that pit Gasparovic directly against Radicova.  In these, surveys (of which we have only two, both conducted by MVK) Radicova draws closer to Gasparovic, gaining an average of 8% compared to Gasparovic’s gain of 5%.  This is to be expected since the candidates closer to Radicova (Martinakova and Miklosko) have more support than those closer to Gasparovic (Bollova, Sidor, Melnik), but it is still noteworthy since it suggests that a moderately charismatic candidate of the right can gain significantly larger numbers of voters than do the parties of the right.

Poll results for Presidential Candidates, Top Two, in Slovakia, 2009

January 2009: FOCUS echos UVVM

January 2009 poll comparisions and averages

I should have known to wait for the FOCUS numbers to come in before writing yesterday’s post.  FOCUS is coming in much more quickly these days.  This month, however, one or the other would have been enough as the results are strikingly similar.  The two polls show the same trends for every major party.
For Smer the two moved in the same direction, almost perfectly.  Gone may be the day when FOCUS was much lower than UVVM on numbers for Smer.  Whether this is the result of a shift in network, methodology or the end of a long string of chance differences, I cannot say.  (Anyone know the answer?).  This month showed a decline from a peak in both.

Multiple-poll+average+ for +Smer+ for the most recent +4+months+ in Slovakia

For SDKU the resultsof the two polls have been shockingly close for three months now.  SDKU has stabilized, perhaps helped a bit by Radicova’s presidential campaign (perhaps not).

Multiple-poll+average+ for +SDKU+ for the most recent +4+months+ in Slovakia

This graph of recent results for SNS shows a fairly wide divergence but similar trending–very slowly downward since December.

Multiple-poll+average+ for +SNS+ for the most recent +4+months+ in Slovakia

This graph of recent results for MK shows a slight rise in both polls, though the 2% gap is wide for such a small party.

Multiple-poll+average+ for +MK+ for the most recent +4+months+ in Slovakia

The two polls’ numbers for HZDS are (as they have been) incredibly similar.  HZDS has reached its lowest recorded numbers in both polls (though with FOCUS this represents a tie with its numbers from August 2008).

Multiple-poll+average+ for +HZDS+ for the most recent +4+months+ in Slovakia

This results for KDH show greater similarity between polls than during much of last year.  Both polls have shown essentially identical results for January and February and this time it is good news for KDH which has risen in both, even after its vice-chair Daniel Lipsic raised a storm by talking about his party’s participation in the “buying” of deputies during the previous parliamentary term.

Multiple-poll+average+ for +KDH+ for the most recent +4+months+ in Slovakia

This graph of recent results for KSS shows little change from last month with the two polls placing the party in its traditional zone between 2 and 3%.

Multiple-poll+average+ for +KSS+ for the most recent +4+months+ in Slovakia

This graph of recent results for SF shows a small gain in both surveys moving it toward 3%, up notably from its nadir a year ago at less than 1%.  The party’s gains have been steady, so it is difficult to attribute this solely to the increased visibility due to party chair Martinakova’s presidential bid, but this may help.

Multiple-poll+average+ for +SF+ for the most recent +4+months+ in Slovakia

The two other oft-polled parties, remain insignificant.  ANO broke 1% for the first time in 5 months in the FOCUS poll but was nearer to zero in the UVVM poll; after some respectable (for it) showings around 2% in the past months, HZD is back at around 1% in both polls.

Finally, FOCUS has decided to continue with its addition of small parties–KDS, ZS and LIGA.  Each of these parties did better than in the previous month of polling by FOCUS: ZS rose from 0.4% to 1.0%, almost identical to its 1.1% result in UVVM polls.  KDS rose from 0.3% to 0.6% (at the same time that KDH rose several points) in the FOCUS poll.  LIGA rose from 0.3% to 0.4%.  So far SaS is present on the polling list only of MVK and we do not have MVK numbers for January or February.

Since the two polls showed such similar results, averaged all together it is almost indistinguishable from yesterday’s report on UVVM.  Smer leads, SDKU stays stable, SNS and HZDS drop slightly, KDH and SMK rise.

2:||||||||||||||||||||||||

UVVM+poll+data+ for +all+parties+except+Smer+ for the most recent +4+months+ in Slovakia

This means that the coalition stops its climb and the opposition stops its fall and so we are back almost exactly to mid-2008, though with HZDS a bit weaker and Smer a bit stronger.

Multiple-poll+average+ for +coalition+support for the most recent +24+months+ in Slovakia

The only really noteworthy result of analysis by bloc is that the “Slovak National” bloc falls to its lowest recorded levels (around 18%).  I doubt that these voters have lost their national sentiment, but they may have shifted to KSS or Smer (or even KDS?) which are not exclusively nationally oriented.

Multiple-poll+average+ for +party+blocs+ for the most recent +24+months+ in Slovakia

This month’s distribution of parliamentary seats shows that this all makes little difference so far in the big picture.  As always, Smer can form a government with only one partner (and since the numbers putting Smer with a simple majority last month were unlikely to be reached in an actual election, this is the way it has been essentially since the 2006 election.)Multiple-poll+average+ for +estimated+party+seat+distribution for the most recent +1+month+ in Slovakia

Multiple-poll+average+ for +estimated+party+seat+distribution for the most recent +24+months+ in Slovakia

As always, the actual polling numbers are available online at Google Docs:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pdhlCClsiyAMi39bLFpY_Zg

And the most recent three months are below in tabular format (using “iframe” which may not work on all browsers).

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February 2008 UVVM: Coalition down slightly, new counting method for UVVM

UVVM Monthly Report for December 2008

If you set your frame narrowly enough, things can change quickly. In the big picture, nothing much has changed since last month, and the relative positions of parties are pretty much as they have been for the last two years.  Within that narrow frame, however, the current coalition has gone from near-highs for the post election period to near-lows thanks to drops in all three of the coalition parties, the first time all three have dropped simultaneously since late 2006.

Of the three, Smer’s drop was the largest but by far the smallest in percentage terms and the drop occurred after one of the party’s near-high scores, so some correction may be expected.  This month’s 46% is still one of the party’s eight highest scores over the last 30 months.
UVVM+poll+data+ for +all+parties+ for the most recent +24+months+ in Slovakia
UVVM+poll+data+ for +all+parties+except+Smer+ for the most recent +4+months+ in Slovakia

For the other coalition parties, the drop was more significant, with SNS sliding back toward the 11% mark after a high point late in 2008 and HZDS dropping to its lowest mark ever recorded in a major survey, the first time the party has ever received less than 6%.  Of course there is a lot of noise with smaller parties, but HZDS’s tendency to hit new lows every six months or so and its inability for its occasional highs to rise to the levels of previous highs cannot be happy news within the party.  The graph below suggests that the party is not yet in danger of dropping below the 5% threshold in the 2010 election, but the danger is getting closer, particularly since party regularly varies more than 1% from its trendline average meaning that with current trends there is a strong chance that the party will post at least one or two results below the 5% threshold in the months just before elections, a symbolic result that could further hurt the party’s chances.

HZDS trendline

For the opposition parties in parliament, this was a good month, especially for KDH which seemed to be facing a slide as serious as that of HZDS. Again there is a lot of noise and variation here but this gives the party a brief reprieve.  Overall, as the graph below shows, the opposition parties are back near their high point for the post election period.  Unfortunately for them, this is a paltry 33%.

UVVM+poll+data+ for +coalition+support for the most recent +24+months+ in Slovakia
UVVM+poll+data+ for +party+'blocs'+ for the most recent +24+months+ in Slovakia

And unfortunately for them, Smer is still within striking range of a one-party government.
UVVM+poll+data+ for +estimated+party+seat+distribution for the most recent +1+month+ in Slovakia

UVVM+poll+data+ for +estimated+party+seat+distribution for the most recent +24+months+ in Slovakia

As always, the actual polling numbers are available online at Google Docs:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pdhlCClsiyAMi39bLFpY_Zg  And the most recent three months are at the bottom in tabular format (using “iframe” which may not work on all browsers).

It is worth noting here, however that UVVM has changed its method for asking about voter participation and that this can have effects on the overall results.  As the table below shows, UVVM has changed its question three times in the last two years, switching to a “Do not sympathize with any” response after the 2006 election and then in 2007 changing back to the method it used before which allows a “will not vote” response.  This new option lowered the number of people who specified a party from an average 0f 74% to an average of 68% (though increasing disillusionment with all parties could explain some of the decline).  Now UVVM has split the question into two parts, first asking whether respondents will vote at all and then asking whether for whom they will vote. Asking first about voting has the immediate effect of increasing the share of “will not vote” responses by 8 percentage points.  In the second phase, the survey asks those who will vote to specify a party and here too it allows a “do not know” response.  Between the 8 point increase in “will not vote” and the 3 point increase in the combined “do not know” (respondents who do not know if they will vote and those who do not know for whom they will vote), this method produces an 11 point drop in those who actually specify a party.  Whether this is good or bad is hard to say.  It suggests a lower level of turnout–and I suspect the purpose of the shift is to fix UVVM’s overprediction of turnout in 2006–but whether it is a more accurate measure of results is hard to say.  It is notable that it does not substantially alter the overall party preferences, all of which stay within a few percentage points of their numbers using the old method.  Of course the only way to really test the effect is to ask both sets of questions at the same time, but this would double the expense.  More news on this as I find out any details.

2006 2007-2008 2009
For whom will you vote? For whom will you vote? Will you vote? For those answering “Will vote”: For whom will
you vote?
Does not sympatize with any 26.4          
    Will not vote 17.9 Will not vote 25.0
Does not know who to vote for 14.2    
    Does not know whether to vote 11.4
Will vote 63.6
Specifies party 73.6 Specifies party 67.9   Does not know whom to vote for 6.2
Specifies party 57.4

Finally, I should note that like MVK and FOCUS, UVVM appears to have added the Party of Greens (SZ) to its list of parties on the official roster.  At some point I will rework my software to include them here, but for the moment they remain at a single percentage point (close to the results obtained by FOCUS in January) and so not much is lost by their omission.  It is noteworthy that only one in a thousand respondents (here it can only be one out of the 600 asked) specified a party not on the list, suggesting that there is no spontaneous support for KDS, Liga, or SaS.

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“Ostentatiously New” Parties (in Lithuania)

I have written a bit about new parties and particularly those parties for which being “new” is a feature (as Allan Sikk calls it, “the project of newness”)–and will be writing a lot more about this–but I never imagined that a single party’s advertising campaign could capture almost all of the basic issues involved with newness.  Enter Lithuania’s “National Resurrection Party”(Tautos prisikėlimo partija), a party of political outsiders run by a television performer  and producer Arūnas Valinskas (see him hosting Lithuania’s version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire“).

In addition to its origins outside of politics–and in show business–the party single five slide ad campaign offers a nearly perfect summary of the themes of “ostentatiously new” parties across the region all rolled up into a single package which itself breaks the “establishment” political mold with the kind of daring images that get attention and that most politicians would not risk using (the candidates themselves in drag, straightjackets, prison stripes, vampire-teeth and Viking helmets):

Theme 1: Fighting corruption
Caption: We will force the general prosecutor to work.
Behind bars

Theme 2: Honesty and independence (Along with Theme 1:Corruption)
Caption: We won’t steal from you (We can earn our own money)
We won’t steal from you

Theme 3: Tangible improvements in quality of life
Caption: When we rule, the price of heat won’t go up
Out of the cold

Theme 4: Defense of the people
Caption: We will fight for you tooth and claw
Tooth and claw

 Theme 5: Incapacity of the current political elite and its institutions
Caption: Let us enter this ship of fools (the ship is labeled “parliament”)
Ship of fools

These are really great ads–some of the funniest I’ve seen in a long time–but they offer no evvidence that TPP will break the cycle of brand new media-driven parties scoring big, entering government, losing their lustre and collapsing to leave a space before the next election (we’ve seen it twice now).  To the contrary, this party seems to have refined the process even further.  I have never seen an ad campaign that makes it more difficult to imagine the party’s future ad campaign.  It is hard to know where to go from here and so I can only assume that the party’s futures look like the ship in picture #5.  (Of course that’s what I said about Slovakia’s unprecedentedly popular ruling party Smer just after its election in 2006–see the last sentence in http://www.spectator.sk/articles/view/23721/2/).

Hat tip (much belated) to a bit of schadenfreude from The Monkey Cage http://www.themonkeycage.org/2008/10/post_130.html .  Thanks to Marek Rybar for obtaining the translations. Any errors in retranslation are my own.

January 2009 Poll Averages: Smer gains, KDH loses, new parties become visible

January 2009 Poll Averages

Overall Monthly Report

Numbers for January are in and while there is not too much to report, there are a few striking findings.  Smer had an excellent month, tying its previous high score in UVVM and achieving a new high in FOCUS (by more than 2 percentage points over its previous high in October 2008).  As the graphs below show, this means that for the first time the poll /average/ gives it a straightforward parliamentary majority of 76 seats.  The big open question is whether a sinking economy will pull these numbers down, but every time it seems that the party has now hit its peak, it sags a bit and goes on to a new peak, so this is truly an open question.

2:||||||||||||||||||||||||

This short-term graph of poll results for averages of major parties other than Smer shows a sharp–two percentage point–drop in KDH not quite compensated for by a rise in SDKU, while within the coalition, SNS’s loss was HZDS’s gain (perhaps literally).  And SMK continues its slow slide to places well below its demographic base.  In general the nationali parties have remained stable while the major opposition parties have all dropped by small margins over the past few months. Among the smaller parties, KSS stayed stable and the 4% result for Slobodne Forum in last month’s FOCUS poll is even more clearly apparent as an outlier.  HZD (not shown here) has been on a very slight upward trend, perhaps related to the Gasparovic presidential campaign, but shows nothing like the bounce that it saw in Gasparovic’s previous campaign.

UVVM+poll+data+ for +all+parties+except+Smer+ for the most recent +4+months+ in Slovakia

Not pictured here–because they are mere single data points, is new polling data for other small parties, many themselves new. FOCUS has apparently begun to follow the lead of MVK and include these parties on their response sheet, making it easier for voters to choose them.  The psychological effect of this choice is immediately apparent, increasing by a factor of 10 the number of people specifying a party other than those above (albeit from 0.1% to 1.0%).  The Party of Greens (SZ) netted 0.4% from this choice while the KDH-splinter Conservative Democratic Party (KDS) emerged at 0.3% and the liberal LIGA emerged at 0.3% as well.  The 0.3% for KDS may have some bearing on the drop in KDH, but the 0.3% represents only one seventh of the KDH decline.

It is notable that FOCUS numbers for these small parties are much lower than those of MVK which regularly reports SZ figures above 2% and in September reported KDS at 0.8% (but has not reported KDS numbers since).  Interestingly MVK in December put the numbers of yet another new party, the liberal Freedom and Solidarity (SAS) at 2.0%.  FOCUS did not include this party in its list.

Now back to results for bigger parties. Even with weakness in SNS, the Smer increase (and small HZDS increase as well) still pulls the coalition to a new high of 66%: two out of three voters in Slovakia.

Multiple-poll+average+ for +coalition+support for the most recent +24+months+ in Slovakia

This long-term graph of poll results for (loosely defined) party “blocs” parties shows the coalition’s increase coming from Smer while SNS and HZDS continue to split their 20%, each month differing only in who gets how much of it. The drop in KDH hurts the opposition significantly.

Multiple-poll+average+ for +party+blocs+ for the most recent +24+months+ in Slovakia

This month’s distribution of parliamentary seats shows the first “poll average” Smer majority.  It’s coalition partners bring an additional 29 seats.  The opposition by this standard would muster 45, which is not that much more than the current coalition without the Smer majority.Multiple-poll+average+ for +estimated+party+seat+distribution for the most recent +1+month+ in Slovakia

Multiple-poll+average+ for +estimated+party+seat+distribution for the most recent +24+months+ in Slovakia

As always, the actual polling numbers are available online at Google Docs:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pdhlCClsiyAMi39bLFpY_Zg

And the most recent three months are below in tabular format (using “iframe” which may not work on all browsers).

<br />