Largest Parties Keep Bleeding Support, Zares Loses A Third

We’ve had two new polls come in yesterday, both dealing in variety of issues – but obvioulsy support the main political parties are getting is of main interest. A poll by the Public Opinion and Mass Communication Research Centre (CJM) shows basically the same relations between Pahor’s Social Democrats (SD) and Janša’s Slovene Democratic Party (SDS) we’ve seen in Delo poll 12 days ago.

Also in accordance with Delo’s poll is the undecided column, which grew substantially. A couple of eddies are notable, though. Firstly, the relatively big drop for Zares, which seems to correspond to an increase in support for LDS – the change in both cases in exactly 3 percent. Now, this can be attributed to a different polling sample, but as CJM’s samples are notoriously accurate (most of the time, anyway), this could very well be the definite proof that these two parties are addressing basically the same voters – although Delo’s poll shows that Zares might aslo be entering SD’s turf as well. In any case, I think Zares are not particularly happy with this poll, whereas LDS shouldn’t break out the extra spam rations, as this result has yet to turn into an upward trend.

Lower on the chart, a rise in support for the nationalists (SNS), pensioners’ party (DeSUS) and predominantly catholic NSi is notable. All three parties have a difficult-to-detect base, so in reality SNS’s 6 percent means huge gains in the parliament, while DeSUS’s 3 percent also translate into comfortably making it across the 4% treshold for entering the parliament. The same goes for NSi, which cannot be exactly happy with 2 percent, but as I already noted, they might have gone below radar to regroup. According to this CJM poll, it is only Slovene People’s Party (SLS) which has to ring the alarm bells, but we’ll see what (if any) effect the Operation Clean Shovel will have on the polls. Namely CJM was polling from February 11 until February 13, missing the full blow of the operation by a day-and-a-half.

In the other corner, wearing blue shorts, is a poll by Parcifal Group (commissioned by the government, might I add), which shows a somewhat different picture. Most notably, according to this poll – a similar sample, but polled from 11 Feb until 14 Feb – the ruling SDS of Janez Janša holds a .9 percent lead over Borut Pahor‘s opposition Social Democrats, a result which is definitely going against the flow. Also, this poll shows the least support for SLS, as well as the higehst percentage of undecided voters, which strongly suggest a significantly different pattern. But although this poll was commisioned by the government, it doesn’t neceserily mean that it is wrong or rigged. It’s just – different

BTW: Neither polls shows data for Sašo Peče’s Lipa – probably because the renegades of SNS have yet to formally establish a political party.

Pengovsky’s projection: Despite the different percentages, two things become obvious – that the number of undecided voters is again on the rise, which probably means that the effect of presiedntial elections is slowly wearing off, which might spell better times for Janša’s government (it recorded a mere 33% of support according to CJM poll). SD and SDS will probably continue running neck and neck, with SD slowly bleeding suporrt for the next couple of months. Who takes the top stop thus depends on whether SDS can bleed its support at a slowe pace than SD. For now that seems to be the case. Also, keep an eye on Zares. Losing a third of support is not a trivial thing, which means that voters might see this party as a sort of a refuge for disenchanted left-wing voters. Generally speaking, things are still interesting on the left side of the political spectrum, with all parties in the poll looking to make it across the 4% parliamentarian treshold.