By: Tanja Brkić / Nova24tv
Support for Robert Golob’s party – the Freedom Movement (Gibanje Svoboda) – has dropped sharply in the latest Parsifal public opinion poll, especially compared to the previous months. If the elections were held this Sunday, only 24.8 percent of respondents would still vote for the party in question. The Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS) is right behind it with 23.7 percent support.
The Parsifal Agency measured voter support for political parties between the 10th and the 14th of October with a public opinion poll. Using a sample of 705 respondents, it came up with the following results.
If the elections were held this Sunday, 24.8 percent of the respondents would vote for the Freedom Movement, followed by the Slovenian Democratic Party with 23.7 percent support. New Slovenia (Nova Slovenija – NSi) is in third place with 8.2 percent, followed by the Social Democrats (Socialni demokrati – SD) with 6.6 percent and the Left party (Levica) with 5 percent. In addition, 31.1 percent of the respondents would not vote for any of the parties mentioned above, would not participate in the elections, or simply do not know who they would vote for, or answered something completely different. Meanwhile, 57.4 percent of the respondents would definitely go vote.
Support for Golob’s party is plummeting, and SDS and NSi are on the rise
A timeline of support for the largest government party shows a downward trend, as it has lost 5.5 percentage points since June, while support for the largest opposition party, the SDS party, has grown by 1.1 percentage points. NSi has gained 1.6 percentage points compared to June, the SD party lost 0.2 percentage points, and the Left party jumped from 3.7 to 5 percent.
Pensioners resent Golob; Klakočar Zupančič is embarrassing him
Analysts note that the drop in support for the largest government party is due to the slow reaction of the Prime Minister to the energy crisis and his quick action when it comes to personnel changes and attacks on key positions in the state economy. Mention should also be made of the disillusioned pensioners – the most deprived part of the population in Slovenia – and the fact that the Golob government has allocated them a mere 5 euros of additional money to their pensions in order to help them cope with the economic downturn, while our other neighbouring countries have allocated considerably more to this social group. The government has given even more to civil servants. The party has also suffered a great deal of damage from the actions of the Vice-President of the Freedom Movement and Speaker of the National Assembly, Urška Klakočar Zupančič, who has made a number of public slip-ups, which have made her the party’s “black sheep,” and whom many believe should be replaced for the sake of political hygiene.
The public opinion poll was conducted between the 10th and the 14th of October, and 705 respondents participated in it, of which 50.1 percent were women. The average age of the participants is 53.5 years, and the standard deviation is 16.8 years. The majority of the respondents are from the oldest age group (46.6 percent), a slightly smaller share of participants belongs to the middle age group (33.6 percent), and the smallest number of respondents is from the youngest age group (19.8 percent). The majority of the respondents have completed high school (34.2 percent), followed by those with completed high education or higher (28.8 percent), 20.6 percent of respondents have finished vocational school, and 16.5 percent have either completed or have not completed primary school. The majority of the respondents currently reside in a small village or hamlet (55.6 percent), followed by those who live in the city (27.2 percent) or a smaller town (17.2 percent). Most of the respondents are from Central Slovenia (26.1 percent), followed by the Podravska (15.9 percent) and Savinjska (11.6 percent) statistical regions.