Poll projects close race for 3rd place and for entry into parliament
Ljubljana - The final Mediana poll ahead of Sunday's general election gave the Freedom Movement a 21.1% support rating, which puts it 0.6 percentage points ahead of the ruling Democrats (SDS). Things have meanwhile gotten even more crowded in the important race under way around the 4% parliamentary threshold, shows the poll, published on Friday.
The newly established party of the ousted energy exec Robert Golob, which is expected to lead a centre-left bloc in parliament, gained 1.3 percentage points compared to the Mediana poll that was published by the newspaper Delo and commercial broadcaster POP TV on 11 April.
While the SDS gained 1.9 points, it would get 24.4% taking into account only answers from those who said they would likely go to the polls. It would still come in second, as the Freedom Movement is projected to get 26.1%.
The projected support metric also predicts a close race for third place. The SocDems were given 7.8%, while the Left and the NSi, the SDS's coalition partner, share fourth place at 7.7%.
Things are looking better than so far for the opposition Alenka Bratušek Party (SAB), which is now projected to get 5.6%, while prospects seem bleak for the LMŠ, the party of former PM Marjan Šarec - the forth member of the current centre-left opposition is projected to get 2.7%.
A very close race is expected in the battle for entry into parliament, with the non-parliamentary Pirate Party (3.1%) and the anti-vaccination party Resni.ca (3.0%) emerging as serious contenders along with Connecting Slovenia (3.1%), an alliance that includes the coalition party Concretely.
None of the remaining parties is projected to get more than 1.5%.
Mediana, which conducted the survey between 19 and 21 April, reported 7.1% of the 1031 respondents said they did not know who to vote for, 3.2% said they would not vote for any party, while 4.5% did not want to say.
Delo quotes analysts as arguing that it was too soon to come to any conclusion, as a quarter of the electorate could still change their minds by Sunday.