By: Spletni časopis
Robert Golob’s “burek campaign” has still not brought a turnaround, as support for the Gibanje Svoboda has even fallen below 20 percent (to 19.8%).
This was shown by a Mediana poll, the results of which were broadcast tonight by TV Slovenia. This confirms the trend of the “collapse of Svoboda”, which, if we take into account the merger with LMŠ and SAB after the previous elections, has already lost almost half of its voters. The data for the governing coalition are similarly catastrophic. Only 35.1 percent of voters would vote for the governing Svoboda, SD, and Levica. SDS and NSi (together with SLS and Fokus) would collect more on their own: 35.9 percent. The government would be formed by Janez Janša (SDS). Whether he could form it, however, would depend on the smaller parties. It is very strange that RTV Slovenia, in its seat‑allocation projection, sees only seven parties entering parliament, even though their own data place the Pirates and Resni.ca at the same starting point, meaning there should be eight. Why Resni.ca “crossed” the threshold while the Pirates remained outside is unclear. The recalculation, if we exclude voters who are undecided about parties, is as follows:
RTV SLO itself writes differently, claiming that seven parties would enter parliament, and they illustrate it that way. But according to the percentages they publish, there would be eight. This is how they write about the seven:
At the same time, in the graphic showing how many seats parties would receive, they assign the Pirates and Resni.ca the same share, meaning three new parties should enter parliament, eight in total. Why Resni.ca is in parliament according to them, while the Pirates are not, is not entirely clear.
The fact that their seat calculation does not match the party percentages is rather awkward. It is additionally awkward because, according to their calculation, Levica would receive more seats than the Democrats, even though its share in the poll is lower. These figures were repeated across all RTV SLO media, not only on TVS.
I asked RTV SLO for an explanation of how these mathematical miracles occurred. I will publish it when I receive it. Although viewers pointed out the implausibility already in the evening, it is additionally unusual that TVS did not publish a correction by morning.
If we trust the party shares, the Democrats would play an important role, achieving the best result among the new parties with seven percent. Anže Logar said today that he will not help keep Golob in power, nor will he help Janša form a government. He intends to form it himself. But with seven percent, the figure shown by the Mediana poll (if we exclude the undecided), he will not have the voter legitimacy for that. So far, the government with the weakest election result, formally a minority government, was formed after the 2018 elections by Marjan Šarec, whose party received 12.6 percent of the vote. He lasted until the Covid epidemic.
According to Mediana, if elections were held today, two more parties would enter parliament: the Pirates of Jasmin Feratović and Resni.ca of Zoran Stevanović, both with just under five percent. Stevanović is known to belong to the bloc of parties currently governing us, known for refusing cooperation with SDS. In terms of positions close to Kremlin interests, he is even close to the far‑left Levica of Asta Vrečko. The Pirates are more unpredictable.
A warning: Public opinion polls should not be trusted. They completely missed both recent referendums and the European elections. Each time, three times in a row, they were off in favour of the governing parties, that is, the left. Most companies conducting polls (Ninamedia, Mediana, Valicon) for the largest media outlets are known to be commercially and politically connected with politicians of the governing parties. The data analysis was also prepared with the help of AI Gemini.
In the ranking of the first six places, the Mediana poll is identical to the Parsifal poll for Nova24TV: in both, NSi under Jernej Vrtovec, running in a coalition with SLS and Fokus, is in third place behind SDS and Svoboda, followed by SD under Matjaž Han, the Democrats, Levica with Vesna…
In the graphics and article in Spletni časopis, the party support percentages are recalculated so that only voters who expressed a preference for a party are included. This allows comparison with elections and between polls. I count as “party‑identified” also those who choose “other”, usually parties not offered to respondents but mentioned spontaneously. The original party‑support percentages from various polls, as published by the media and used as the basis for recalculation, are shown in the table (you can enlarge all tables by clicking):
I list all the data used for the recalculations because this makes it easier to understand the differences between polls and also allows verification in case errors occurred during data transfer or processing. Comparisons are not simple, because different agencies conduct polls with different questionnaires, using different technical methods, and they also present results differently.