The Slovenia Times

Last Day of the Local Elections Campaign

Nekategorizirano

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Representatives of the Italian and Hungarian ethnic minorities will be voted on in nine municipalities, while a total of 19 municipalities will meanwhile vote on a Roma councillor among a total of 56 candidates.

The structure of candidates for mayor is male-dominated, with 609 men and only 94 women entering the mayoral race. The biggest competition is in Maribor, the country's second-largest city, where as many as 17 candidates are vying for the mayoral post, all of them men.

On the other hand, the people of 36 municipalities already know who will be their new mayor as the incumbents have no challengers.

Run-offs will meanwhile be held in municipalities where no candidate secures a majority of votes in the first round, expectedly on 19 October.

However, it is already known that there will be no run-off in almost half of all municipalities (99), as 63 municipalities have only two mayoral candidates.

The October elections are the sixth local elections in independent Slovenia. The first were held in 1994, when Slovenia was divided into 147 municipalities.

The number increased to 210 by 2006, while an additional two municipalities, Mirna and Ankaran, were established in 2011 and 2013, respectively.

Special local elections in Mirna (SE), which had split from Trebnje, were held in April 2011, while local elections in Ankaran, which defected from the coastal town of Koper, will be held for the first time this Sunday.

Unlike in general elections, independent candidates represent strong competition to established political parties in local elections. In 2010, the candidacies of 70 elected mayors had been based on voter signatures, which was three more than at the local elections four years earlier.

Four years ago, the People's Party (SLS), which was squeezed out of parliament in the July early election, got the biggest number of mayors (41), followed by the right-leaning Democrats (SDS) with 33, Social Democrats (SD) with 20 and Liberal Democrats with 13. The SLS also dominated the 2006 elections with 49 elected mayors.

An average turnout in local elections is around 60%. The highest was in 2002, when it reached 72.1% as local elections were held along presidential elections, while it was the lowest in 2010, when it stood at 50.98%. Turnout in the eleven city municipalities is usually lower than in the other municipalities.

Parties and candidates will have until Friday midnight to address the voters, after which the blackout will set in until some 3,300 polling stations close at 7 PM on Sunday.

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