By M.Bo., P.T., J.S., STA
At 7:00, 3,083 polling stations had opened across Slovenia. Nearly 1.7 million voters will decide who will enter the 90-member National Assembly in 2022-2026. Polling stations will close at 19:00. Follow the election process and results LIVE below.
Highlights:
- Slovenia is holding its 10th democratic elections and the 9th elections to the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia.
- 1476 candidates from 20 political parties or lists are standing for 90 seats.
- 130,151, or 7.67% of the electorate, cast their vote early.
- Prime Minister Janez Janša voted very early. “I hope that we will continue on this path and that we will use all the potential we have,” he stressed.
23.08 After 98.2% of the votes counted, the situation is as follows: the Freedom Movement (34.34% of the votes, or 40 MPs), SDS (23.83%, or 28 MPs), NSi (6.92%, or eight MPs), SD (6.64%, or seven MPs), Levica (4.22%, or five MPs).
22.55 Zdravko Počivalšek, President of the Konkretno party, which is part of the Let’s Connect Slovenia list, is disappointed with the result, but hopes for a better result in the local and presidential elections.
22.40 Luka Mesec, coordinator of the Left Party, announces that he will tender his resignation tomorrow, as the party has not achieved the desired result.
22.30 SDS President Janez Janša congratulated the relative winner and welcomed the high turnout. “The new government will face challenges, but the solid foundations that our government has laid are in place and it will be possible to sail ahead and avoid the cliffs.” The SDS even won more votes than in previous elections, winning districts where it had not before. As Janša says, the result of the elections does not change anything for SDS, they will always be state-building and ready to cooperate.
22.22. Matej Tonin, President of the NSi, said, “Tomorrow is a new day, Slovenia and the world are facing new challenges, which will have to be faced with courage.” The NSi are not afraid of this, he added, and if they are in opposition, they will be constructive. For it has been shown where throwing stones under the feet leads – outside Parliament. “We are here to make things better for Slovenia tomorrow.”
22.05 Robert Golob, President of the Freedom Movement, said in a statement after Zoom: “With 80% of the votes counted, we can conclude that our goal has been achieved. Congratulations to everyone who helped. I am sincerely grateful, because true strength is only in the team, in the collective.” He also stressed the high voter turnout, “because this gives weight to our mandate”. He expressed his gratitude to civil society, which helped so many people to turn out to vote.
21.55 After 81.23 per cent of the votes counted, the situation is as follows: the Freedom Movement (33.55 per cent of the votes), SDS (24.61 per cent), NSi (7.05 per cent), SD (6.64 per cent), Levica (4 per cent). Below the parliamentary threshold are LMŠ (3.71 per cent), Let’s Connect Slovenia (3.46 per cent), Resnica (2.88 per cent) ..
20:00 SDS President Janez Janša will make a statement to the media at 22:00 in the Media Centre at Cankarjev dom.
On Facebook he wrote: “Thank you for your vote. A vote for SDS is a vote for Slovenia for all its citizens, without distinction. A vote for the Slovenian family, a vote for the Slovenian worker and pensioner, a vote for our children and for Slovenia’s future. #BuildSlovenia”
19.30 According to the results of the parallel elections, the parties that are expected to remain out of parliament are LMŠ (3.8% of the vote), Let’s Connect Slovenia (3.2%), SAB (2.9%), Resnica (2.6%) and Naša dežela (Our Land) (1.8%), as well as Our Future and Good State, the Pirate Party and the SNS, which received 1.6% of the vote each.
19.10 Aleš Hojs, SDS Vice-President, said in his first reaction: “If these results are correct, the relative winner is to be congratulated, but we will wait for the official results. In my opinion, the parallel results are partly unreliable and we will only be able to talk about the outcome after all the votes have been counted. It was a relatively tough election race and we had all the mainstream media against us.”
19:00 The results of the parallel elections, prepared by Mediana for TVS and POP TV, are as follows: the Svoboda movement received 35.8% of the vote, SDS 22.5%, NSi 6.8%, SD 6.6% and Levica 4.4%. We are still waiting for the results of the National Electoral Commission.
17:45 According to the DVK, 49.3% of all eligible voters had cast their ballot by 16:00. With 7.7% of the total electorate having voted in the past few days, it is already clear that this year’s turnout exceeds that of previous elections: in 2018, the final turnout was 52.64%.
17:00 Incident: a group of the Informed Citizens of Slovenia (OPS) movement, together with Ladislav Troha, arrived at the headquarters of the State Election Commission (SE), where they intended to supervise the work of the Commission and monitor its meeting. The director of the DVK, Dušan Vučko, told Troha that the DVK was only there to observe the election and that the DVK was not in session today, and asked him three times to leave. As this did not help, the police were called. On top of that, Troha was allegedly infected with coronavirus.
16:15 Julija Herle, entrepreneur and SDS candidate, has cast her vote for the national elections at the polling station in Viru near Domžale. “Elections are very important because we all decide what kind of future we will live in or what kind of conditions we will live in,” she said, adding, “It is very nice that this holiday coincides with the feast of Divine Mercy, White Sunday.”
15:30 Rado Gladek, a candidate for the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia, has cast his vote at the polling station in the Trzin Primary School. When asked what he expected, he replied, “That the voters will make the right choice and – hand on heart – that the Slovenian Democratic Party will win.” He will await the election results together with his electoral staff and supporters.
13.45 356,976 voters, or 21.05% of the total number of eligible voters, had cast their ballots in the National Assembly elections by 11:00, the National Election Commission (NEC) announced. The highest voter turnout was in the Kranj constituency, 22.87%, and the lowest in the Maribor constituency, 19.86%. By comparison, in the 2018 elections, 17.27% of all eligible voters had cast their ballot by 11:00 – the final turnout then was 52.64%.
13:30 SDS MEP Karmen Furman, who is running for a new mandate in the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia, has cast her vote in Slovenska Bistrica. “With our SDS-led government, we have shown that we know how to build a Slovenia for all people, and we want people to recognise this today and to continue building Slovenia in the future,” she said. She will be waiting for the election results in the centre of Slovenska Bistrica with her electoral staff and supporters.
13:15 SDS candidate Domen Cukjati has cast his vote in the national elections, accompanied by his family.
13:00 Klavdija Operčkal, SDS candidate has casted her vote at a polling station in Ljubljana’s Črnuče. “What the Olympics are to athletes, elections are to politicians,” she said, drawing a parallel to four years of effort and adding that the judges in today’s race will be voters.
12:45 “Only together!” tweeted the Minister of the Economy, Zdravko Počivalšek (Konkretno), who voted in Podčetrtek.
12:30 Luka Simonič, President of the Slovenian Democratic Youth Maribor and member of the SDM IO, voted in Maribor. “I expect a favourable result, i.e. that we will win,” he said, adding that the people of Styria are also deciding what kind of government they want in the future. “This is the election of the decade, it is up to them how we will develop.”
12:00 SDS MP Mojca Škrinjar, who is also standing for election as an SDS MP in the new convocation, cast her vote at the polling station in Ljubljana Šiška Gymnasium at noon. “This election is important because we need a safe, peaceful, prosperous, and green Slovenia where all people respect each other,” she said after voting. She said she would await the results at SDS headquarters.
11:00 Since the beginning of the election silence, which started at midnight on Friday, and until 10:00 today, the Ministry of the Interior’s duty service has received a total of 296 reports of alleged violations of the election silence – 54 of them today alone. Most of them concern emails sent to a large number of addresses and the repetition of a TV programme on the elections.
10:45 Matej Tonin, President of the NSA Party and current Deputy Prime Minister is voting at the Cultural Centre in Laze v Tuhinju. He is also a candidate for the next convocation of the National Assembly.
10:15 Branko Grims, SDS deputy and candidate for the new convocation of the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia, casts his vote at the polling station in Primskovo in Kranj.
“These elections are important because it is important in which direction Slovenia will develop,” he said. “We want Slovenia to be safe, to be a country of prosperity, to value Slovenian identity, culture and true values. Let’s build Slovenia!”
09:50 The results of the national elections are awaited by many domestic and foreign media in the official media center at Cankarjev dom. According to the Government Communications Office, 123 journalists have accredited themselves, several of them foreign.
09:00 According to the Government Communications Office, 123 journalists have been accredited to cover the elections at the official media center in Cankarjev dom, along with 51 photographers, 54 cameramen, and 21 technicians… A total of 263 media representatives have been accredited. Among the Slovenian media, journalists from almost 30 media outlets have been accredited, while among the foreign media, media from Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, France, Croatia, China, Germany, Serbia, and the UK have been accredited (Bloomberg, Xinhua, the French news agency AFP, the Austrian APA, the Italian Ansa, SOPA, Reuters, Shutterstock, Croatia’s Nova TV, Al Jazeera and Serbia’s Vreme).
08:30 The International Confederation of Democratic and Centre Parties (ICD-CDI), of which the European People’s Party is a part, today tweeted its deep concern about Russian interference in the Slovenian parliamentary elections. Read more HERE
#idccdi worries about the possible #Russian interference in the #Slovenian elections, which is clearly a consequence of firm and unequivocal support for #Ukraine.🇸🇮 was one of the first countries that strongly condemned Russia’s barbaric war on 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/EAYwFNhC8Q
— IDC-CDI (@idc_cdi) April 23, 2022
08:20 This year’s pre-election race was marked by the widespread destruction of posters of candidates for the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia. In particular, posters of the largest Slovenian and ruling party, SDS, were targeted. Read more about it HERE
07:25 After casting his vote, Janez Janša said that today is an important day because it will not only be decided what Slovenia will be like in the next four years but also what Slovenia will be like in the next ten years. “I hope that we will continue on this path and that we will use all the potential we have,” he said, adding that his expectations were good. “When it comes to democratic elections with a large turnout, any result is good.”
07:15 The President of the Slovenian Democratic Party and Prime Minister Janez Janša voted in the national elections in his hometown of Šentilj near Velenje – at the polling station in the Šentilj Home for Local Residents.
07:00 The polls open in Slovenia. There are 3.083 polling stations across the country.
05:00 Among the candidates (party presidents) running for the post of Prime Minister, the most frequent was Prime Minister Janez Janša (President of the SDS). In the case of a new mandate, this would be Janša’s 4th government.
04:12 Candidates come from a wide range of professional backgrounds. There are several lawyers and economists, company directors, teachers, and doctors. There are also a few freelancers, farmers, waiters, and artists. There is also a herbalist, a hypnotherapist, an antiquarian, a yoga teacher, and an archaeologist. According to the information available so far, there are 59 students on the candidate lists, most of them on the list of the Pirate Party of Slovenia, and several pensioners, most of them from the DeSUS party.
03:51 When submitting their candidate lists, the parties had to comply with the 35 % gender quota, and 653 of the 88 candidates are women, which is just over 44 %. The oldest candidate is 82-year-old Tatjana Voj, who was put on the list by the SAB.
03:41 On the Boris Popovič List – Let’s Digitalise Slovenia, 18-year-old Jaka Krčovnik is the youngest candidate. Most of the parliamentary candidates, just over 40%, are between 46 and 61 years old. Just over 30% of the candidates are between 31 and 46, and just under 19% are over 61. Just under 11% of the candidates are under 31 years of age. The average age of candidates on the day of the parliamentary elections will be just under 49 years.
03:15 This year’s elections will also decide whether Slovenia will finally get rid of the deep state or whether the deep state will continue to determine the fate of Slovenians. Watch the documentary The Parallel Mechanism of the Deep State below.
03:00 Candidates for MEPs also have diverse educational backgrounds. Most of the 463 candidates have a second-level higher education qualification. There are 69 PhDs among the candidates, while 19 have only completed primary school.
01:55 A total of 20 parties and lists have submitted nominations for this year’s national elections. Except for the Alliance to Free Slovenia (ZOS), the remaining 19 parties, which will compete to cross the parliamentary threshold, have filed their lists in all eight constituencies. The list of parties that have submitted lists of candidates for the ninth national elections is as follows (in alphabetical order): the Democratic Party of Pensioners of Slovenia (DeSUS), the Patriotic League (DOM), the Svoboda Movement, the Left Party, the Boris Popovič List – Digitalizing Slovenia (LBP), the Marjan Šarc List (LMŠ), the Our Land Party (Naša dežela Stranka dr. Aleksandra Pivec’s Our Future and Good State, the Non-Partisan People’s List of the Healthy Society Movement, New Slovenia – Christian Democrats (NSi), Pirate Party of Slovenia (Pirati), Let’s Connect Slovenia, Serious. ca, Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), Slovenian National Party (SNS), Social Democrats (SD), Alenka Bratušek Party (SAB), Vesna – Green Party For the People of Slovenia, Alliance to Free Slovenia (ZOS)/Movement United Slovenia (ZSI).
01:30 The first data on voter turnout will be available after 12:00, based on the situation at the polling stations at 11:00. Other turnout figures will be available after 17:00, based on the situation at the polling stations at 16:00.
00:15 1 471 candidates are running for 88 seats in the European Parliament and five more candidates running for election as members of the Italian and Hungarian national communities.
00:01 Today, Slovenia will hold its 10th democratic election and the ninth elections to the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia. Polling stations open at 7:00 and close at 19:00.