While it has not always been easy to feel sorry for Vladimir Meciar’s Movement for a Democratic Society, this week’s FOCUS poll offers yet another way in which insult has added to injury.  I have waited for some time for the results of the October FOCUS poll and when it did not come out around [...]

Two small but notable bits of news today for those of us interested in new parties.  Even (perhaps especially) the highest of party officials may go off an found a new party when they find themselves unappreciated in their own: Iveta Radicova, Prime Minister of Slovakia, notes that she didn’t join her current party until [...]

It’s probably a bit early to care about polls again–it’s only been a month since the election, but where there’s polling data there’s usually misanalysis to go with it and one of the purposes of this blog is to address the problems.  The poll we have is FOCUS, which did fairly well in the recent [...]

Note: Thanks to The Monkey Cage for allowing me to reprint the posting below.  I’ve added several graphs that might help to clarify the narrative. One month after its June 12 elections, Slovakia has a new government. On Friday of last week Iveta Radicova of the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union became the prime minister [...]

I have been traveling and working on other projects and so have not had time to post a coherent post-election review, and I may not have time to do that until tomorrow, so in the meantime I will attach here a record of interview I did with the ever-capable Michaela Stankova of the Slovak Spectator.  [...]

A quick calculation.  Even at current levels (which include the absence of MKP-SMK, which is looking increasingly likely), a Smer-SNS coalition would have just barely enough to sustain a majority.  If Smer loses even 4 points from its current level (down to 34%) or Smer loses 3% and SDKU gains 1%, then Smer loses its [...]

I have lived my entire professional life with HZDS, frequently visiting its offices, often taking it to task for what I regarded as serious accountability violations.  And with this set of results for the SUSR, I think it is gone.  (I think it is the first time HZDS has ever fallen below 5% in any [...]

I love polling results and I am always surprised and unhappy when they are abused.  Recent articles in SME and Pravda put needless stress on these results by, on the one hand, treating them as unique and absolute indicators of a party’s success or failure (at least until the next one comes out) and, on [...]

I will deal with the actual poll results in a few future posts, but I want build on the introduction of the Czech dashboard by talking about broader trends and in particular by assessing the magnitude of “new party eruptions,” the dominant feature of the current Czech campaign. In my own recent study of populism [...]

Today’s Pravda has a useful listing of the 18 political parties that will be contesting the 2010 parliamentary election.  The list is incomplete and bit hard to use, though, so I reformat it here.  See Pravda’s story for a bit more information including a summary (in Slovak) of parties’ origins.  As one thing leads to [...]