Ljubljana - The Freedom Movement has gained 4.6 percentage points to 31% in the June poll commissioned by the newspaper Delo to extend its margin ahead of the Democratic Party (SDS) to 9.5 points, despite the opposition party reaching its high watermark.

The SDS gained 3.4 points from May to 21.4% in what is the highest showing for Janez Janša's party since the 2018 election as Delo comments that future polls will show whether the polarisation around the biggest two parties has become a trend.

New Slovenia (NSi), now an opposition party, saw its rating rise by a point to 7.1% to reaffirm its position as the third largest party.

Meanwhile, the Freedom Movement's coalition partners put in mixed performance; the SocDems gained 1.4 points to 5.8% as the Left kept its rating flat at 4.2%.

In its last poll before its merger with the Freedom Movement, the LMŠ party of former Prime Minister Marjan Šarec polled at 2.3%, up 0.2 points from May, just ahead of the anti-vaxxer party Resni.ca, at 2%.

The proportion of the undecided dropped to 7% from 12.5% in May.

The Robert Golob government was given a positive score by 28% of those questioned, against 37.3% who disapprove of its job. In the May poll the Janša government's job was rated negatively by 47.4% of respondents.

Prime Minister Golob tops the popularity ranking of politicians for the second month running ahead of Health Minister Danijel Bešič Loredan and President Borut Pahor.

The poll was carried out by Mediana among 714 respondents between 6 and 9 June.