By: Metod Berlec
The results of the National Assembly elections on April 24th are known. After 100 percent of the votes were counted, the turnout was 70.92 percent. 1,203,373 ballots were cast. There were 1,192,293 valid ballots and 11,080 invalid ones. Five political parties broke into the National Assembly. Gibanje Svoboda party received 34.45 percent of the vote or 410,769 votes, the SDS party 23.48 percent or 279,897 votes, the NSi party 6.86 percent or 81,794 votes, the SD party 6.69 percent or 79,709 votes, and the Levica party 4.46 percent or 53,234 votes. The remaining parties received less than four percent of the vote and therefore did not cross the parliamentary threshold. Close to this were LMŠ and Povežimo Slovenijo (Konkretno, Zeleni, SLS, NLS, NS), which received 3.72 or 44,401 votes, and 3.41 percent and 40,612 votes, respectively.
The voices of the left and centre-left voters, due to left-wing cultural hegemony, concentrated on Robert Golob’s Gibanje Svoboda party, which is the electorate of the so-called deep states. As a result, the SD fell sharply, the Levica barely made it to the National Assembly, while the LMŠ and SAB did not. The SDS sovereignly won the votes of most centre-right voters. Together with the NSi, they gained tens of thousands of additional votes compared to the previous parliamentary elections, but at the same time not enough. Turnout was significantly higher this time than in 2018, when it was only 52.64%. That is to say, higher voter turnout decided this election. For the centre-right side, an additional blow means the fact that the so-called people’s bloc, collected in the joint list Povežimo Slovenijo, failed again. It would have come to the National Assembly if it were not for the Naša dežela party of Aleksandra Pivec, which directly addressed the farmer population and received 1.5 percent or 17,846 votes.
The president of the Slovenian People’s Party, Marjan Podobnik, has already announced his farewell from leading the once important and influential party. It is quite clear that if anyone, the SLS needs a new leader. Someone who will also be able to address the voters of peripheral rural areas, who have largely stayed at home this time. These inadvertently allowed us to be ruled again by an incompetent and predatory leftist comrade. However, they themselves will have to continue to go to work in Austria…
Metod Berlec is the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Demokracija.