Progressive Slovakia's Poll Lead Over Smer Narrows Sharply

A poll conducted by the AKO agency for JOJ 24 and published on 1 October shows Progressive Slovakia still leading Slovakia's parliamentary race but with its advantage over the ruling Smer-SD party shrinking sharply compared with August, according to multiple Slovak outlets.¹²³⁴

Lead narrows as support slips

According to Hospodárske noviny, Progressive Slovakia, led by Michal Šimečka, fell from 21% support in August to 18.9% in September, a decline of 2.1 percentage points that the outlet and Refresher.sk both describe as the largest drop among all parties. Smer-SD, led by Prime Minister Robert Fico, also lost ground, down 0.6 percentage points to 17.1%, a figure confirmed by both STVR and Hospodárske noviny.³²⁴

Aktuality.sk reported that Progressive Slovakia's lead over Smer-SD narrowed to 1.8 percentage points in September. Republika, the anti-system movement led by Milan Uhrík, placed third with 9.7%, according to STVR.¹²

Aktuality.sk reported that 73% of eligible voters had settled on a specific party, while 11.1% said they would not vote, 14.6% remained undecided and 1.3% declined to answer. Noviny.sk/TV JOJ reported similar undecided and non-voting figures, though it framed the overall race differently from Aktuality.sk.¹⁶

Among smaller parties, Aktuality.sk reported that We Are Family, led by Boris Kollár, recorded the largest increase in support, up 0.5 percentage points. The Slovak National Party, led by Andrej Danko, and Demokrati, led by Jaroslav Naď, both remained below the 5% threshold required to enter parliament, according to the same report.¹

Coalition arithmetic

STVR reported that an opposition coalition of Progressive Slovakia, KDH, SaS and Hnutie Slovensko would command 82 seats in the 150-seat National Council, above the 76 needed for a majority. The current governing parties, Smer-SD and Hlas-SD, would hold only 68 seats and could not form a government even with Republika's support, according to the same report.²

Hospodárske noviny reported that the ruling coalition would lack sufficient seats for a majority even with Republika, and that opposition parties could only reach a majority with the participation of Igor Matovič's Hnutie Slovensko. The outlet added that several opposition parties have reservations about governing alongside Matovič. Eight parties in total would clear the 4% or higher thresholds needed to enter parliament, based on a sample of 2,000 respondents, according to Hospodárske noviny.³

Analysts urge caution

AKO representative Kamila Hříchová said the figures for Progressive Slovakia and Smer-SD should be read with caution, stating, "Ono tie čísla, ktoré má Progresívne Slovensko a SMER sociálna demokracia z nášho pohľadu sú identické." She added that the two parties fall within the same statistical margin, saying, "V rámci intervalu spoľahlivosti to je odchýlka, ako to niekto volá," and, "My to voláme tak, že oni sú viac-menej v jednom hrnci, v jednej vode." JOJ 24 reported Smer-SD's confidence interval as running from roughly 15.2% to 19%.⁷

Hříchová also noted a large shift in undecided voters toward firm party preferences, saying, "To je obrovské množstvo, ktoré po tých desatinách bralo tým veľkým." Analyst Világi suggested Progressive Slovakia's decline might relate to a pause in campaigning ahead of the autumn political season, saying, "PS zrejme v tom čase už tak intenzívne nekampaňovalo, pretože sa chystali na otvorenie tej hlavnej sezóny jesennej politickej." JOJ 24 reported that data collection took place partly before and partly after a session of the National Council, and that Hnutie Slovensko's improved showing was linked to intensive ground-level communication.⁷

A different model

A separate projection from PolitPro, a Western-oriented election forecasting outlet, put Progressive Slovakia's trend support at 19.2% as of 1 October, against 17.0% for Smer-SD, with the party winning 34 seats compared with 17 for Hnutie Slovensko. PolitPro projected that the incumbent government alliance of Smer-SD, Hlas-SD and the Slovak National Party would hold only 28.0% of seats, and reported that Progressive Slovakia had gained 1.2 percentage points since the last election while Smer-SD had lost 5.9 points over the same period.⁵