One interesting thing to follow in this election:  the number of votes for parties that do not make the 5% threshold.  In 2010 it was 15.94%. If FOCUS is right, then this time it will be 20.2%.  If MVK is right, it will be 19.0%  Both represent a significant increase over last time.  We haven’t [...]

I’m having a hard time listening to talking heads even on TA3 talking about exit poll numbers as if they are real, when they are often quite far off.  There’s no attempt to say, hey, these polls were off systematically last time.  Instead, there’s blather by otherwise smart people (see the bottom of this post).  [...]

RTVS/FOCUS New results show similar rank ordering, flipping SaS and Most-Hid:   FOCUS   MVK Party % Seats Party % Seats Smer 39.6 75 Smer 37.3 69 KDH 9.9 19 KDH 10.8 20 OL 8.8 16 OL 7.6 14 SDKU 8.1 15 SDKU 7.5 14 SaS 7.1 13 SaS 5.9 11 Most-Hid 6.3 12 Most-Hid [...]

OK, exit polls out from MVK: party % seats smer 37.3 69 kdh 10.8 20 olano 7.6 14 sdku 7.5 14 Most-Hid 6.8 13 SaS 5.9 11 SMK 5.1 9 Here’s what happened with last election’s exit polls.  Not great predictive capability:   FOCUS MVK Prediction was   points Prediction was points Smer too low [...]

So I need to ask Slovakia not to hold elections during my winter teaching term.  It is highly inconvenient.  Research and teaching have taken precedence over blog updates recently, but now it’s election day and I’m looking forward to doing some live-blogging this election night.  I’ll keep updating as the time permits.  First, my own [...]

I know no better way to mourn the death Vaclav Havel to remember the congratulations on his birth that friends snuck past censors back in 1989.  Then they wished him health and continued success.  Now I thank him for that success–success I not in his fame or political success but in his constant attempt to [...]

According to press reports in SME and Pravda, the most recent FOCUS poll shows the party Smer-SD with a commanding lead and the capacity to gain a majority of seats in parliament.  And for once those press reports are correct.  This does not mean that Smer will win the majority, but this FOCUS poll is [...]

I’ve wanted to post this for some time but did not dare to do so until I knew it would work out. Now it has and I can reveal the identity of the guest in yesterday’s Democracy class: But before you say, “what a bad Photoshop job!” you should know that I would never stoop [...]

I always bury the lead in these stories and I’m trying not to, so here’s the four sentence summary: According to current polls Smer is likely to be able to form a government with SNS and would almost be able to form one on its own, but polls are often misleading and obscure narrow margins [...]

Work in progress here, but I wanted to get out the first half while anybody was still interested.  Before I get to that, however, a bit of news: Slovak media is reporting an agreement: Smer will support the EFSF package in a vote to be held Friday at the latest in return for early elections [...]