A brief note here to comment on one specific element of Robert Fico’s press conference remarks here regarding contracts received by those close to Smer: “the government coalition will not allow discrimination against two-thirds of the population only because they sympathize with the government party.” (see below in red). This is notable for several reasons, [...]

But still in the stratosphere (and/or Ferndale). July A virtually computer-free vacation meant no July poll analysis. There is one (and really only one) sense in which this is unfortunate: July polls showed something I have never seen before in Slovakia, a one-party parliamentary majority. In the UVVM July survey, Smer polled 48.5% which, after [...]

In late June I presented an updated review of Slovakia’s politics to the American Chamber of Commerce in Bratislava. This revised version has quite a bit more data on demographic support for parties and recent polling trends. The annotated powerpoint presentation files (quite long) can be found online at the following locations: Powerpoint format: http://www.la.wayne.edu/polisci/kdk/pozorblog/Slovakia’s [...]

Smer at half-time UVVM caused a minor stir with this month’s poll which shows Smer support at near-record levels (46.7%, a level higher than any but that of early 2007′s 47.7%). The dominance of the party is remarkable. Meciar’s HZDS on only one occasion–the election of September 1994 and the first poll immediately following–received preferences [...]

Overall Monthly Report FOCUS has just released its March and April numbers and as usual, not much has changed. Indeed the sheer absence of change makes me note (and regret) that I mentioned about an absence of change even in months with much bigger jumps. Though the various polls show some change (as this weekend’s [...]

UVVM Monthly Report A brief encounter between my computer and a falling hat-rack has led to a long hiatus in postings, but finally I have the processing capacity to post recent results. Not a lot of change, but enough to justify comment: This overall long-term graph of poll results for UVVM shows little change in [...]

Trends and Comparisons Monthly Report I missed the press release for MVK earlier this month and so I add its polls here with a few comments where MVK data actually changes anything. Because MVK results tend to stand between the other two surveys, the only major changes involve a gentle smoothing of trends: With MVK [...]

Trends and Comparisons Monthly Report I offer here, as every month, a general and rather idiosyncratic look at poll numbers for Slovakia from rival political polling firms FOCUS and UVVM. (Toward that end, there will be a debate tonight–March 5 at 17:00–between Pavol Haulik of MVK–another of the big 3–and Ivan Dianiska from FOCUS at [...]

Overall Monthly Report FOCUS numbers for February arrived just moments ago and thanks to new automated methods (and an hour of tweaks when the automatic methods proved not quite error-free), here are the most recent monthly averages of UVVM and FOCUS (and any other major pollster that announces its result during the period. Since the [...]

It is hard to tell the same story in an interesting way every month (and maybe this is why Slovak papers, which unlike me have competing demands and limited space, do not tell the story at all). First the numbers: Politický subjekt: december 2007 január 2008 február 2008 SMER- sociálna demokracia (SMER) 45,2 43,9 45,4 [...]