By: Peter Jančič (Spletni časopis)
“We can bet that today’s Mediana poll on POP TV will show a significant drop in the popularity of Svoboda and a rise of Levica, which will no longer be completely at the bottom.”
I wrote this yesterday in my column Whistles of Tarča for Golob, and in the evening, it came true. Compared to the Mediana poll for Delo two weeks ago, the survey for POP TV showed a dramatic drop in support for Svoboda, which lost nearly a third of its voters or 6.6 percentage points – almost the entire NSi voter base. Robert Golob himself landed in 20th place, right at the bottom of POP TV’s ranking of the most popular officials. The prediction also came true for Levica, led by Asta Vrečko, which gained support and overtook NSi. It is no longer at the very bottom among parliamentary parties.
Even a working visit with the U.S. President, where Tina Gaber accompanied him across the ocean, did not help Golob’s popularity; he has just returned from the trip.
According to POP TV, SDS under Janez Janša has gained some ground compared to Delo’s poll, which is surprising given the considerable media effort to discredit it by ‘whistleblowing’ alongside Levica, as well as the judiciary, which typically begins rapidly ruling against Janša whenever an election where he might win is approaching. The media extensively covers these developments. This tactic was previously used in the Patria case, where all judgments were eventually unanimously overturned by the Constitutional Court as legal incompetence and examples of unfair trials. Now, something similar is happening with the Trenta case. However, Janša has dropped towards the bottom of POP TV’s popularity rankings, where Asta Vrečko is ahead of Robert Golob, although these rankings – with Matjaž Han at the top – are rather meaningless. Svoboda’s result in party polling is the lowest in recent years:
A slightly different picture is shown by the comparison with the Ninamedia poll for Dnevnik, which offered respondents the option to choose Anže Logar’s party – a party that does not yet exist but, according to Ninamedia, would already make it into parliament. However, Ninamedia does not measure some other existing parties, like Resni.ca. Even when comparing Mediana’s results with Ninamedia’s from a week ago, Svoboda loses by far the most support, with some losses also for NSi, Levica, and SDS. The only party that maintains its share is SD. Ninamedia, led by Nikola Damijanić, is both commercially and otherwise part of Zoran Janković’s network.
Opinion polls should not be taken at face value; they only indicate trends and, at times, reveal underlying agendas and goals. Often, they completely miss the actual election results, even just days before voting. This was recently evident in the European elections, where polls significantly underestimated support for SDS.
In the graphs and article on Spletni časopis, the percentages of party support are recalculated based only on respondents who expressed a preference for a specific party. This method allows for comparison with actual election results and between different polls. I also include the “other” party choice as part of the designated support for parties, which typically represents parties not directly listed in the survey but remembered by respondents. The original party support percentages from various polls, as published by the media, are presented in a table (clickable for enlarged viewing of all tables):
I am providing all the data that served as the basis for recalculations, as this helps clarify the differences between measurements and allows for verification in case any errors may have occurred during the data transfer and processing.