So, time for foolilng around is over. Today we have a new Delo poll, showing that Janša’s SDS has almost caught up with opposition Social Democrats. Zares takes the third spot, while the winners of the week are Zmago Jelinčič and his Slovene National Party who took fourth place this time around. Here are the current standings:
This time around I’d like us to have a look at what I like to call political cannibalism. I’ve already noted that we are most likely up for a highly polarised endgame, with the two major parties overshadowing the rest. But we’re months away from the election day and yet every party seems to have already spent the potential for organic growth. So all that the parties have left is stealing voters from one another. And while it may be possible to steal some votes from across the ideological divide, each party seems to be cannibalising every other party within its political bloc.
Take the political left: What we have there is a threesome between Pahor’s SD, Golobič’s Zares and Kresal’s LDS, and from the above graph it is obvious that electorate tends to migrate a bit between these parties. At the moment this trend is especially dangerous for the LDS as it is the weakest of the three. This fact is only amplified by both SD and Zares picking up any support they might have overlooked out there. SD struck a partneship with Christian Socialist Party (an insignificant little party that never made it to the parliament – it never even came close), whereas Zares only yesterday teamed up with Junijska lista, which – in political terms – ammount to little more than a whist club. You might call it forming a broad coalition, I call it fighting for leftovers and LDS isn’t invited apparently.
Basically the same thing is happening on the right side of the political spectrum, where the SDS is feeding of both SLS and NSi. Its just that there are no obscure poitical parties to form an alliance with. Besides – the PM likes to depend on his own devices.
But this in-fihgting on both sides is actually futile, as the following graph will demonstrate:
Disregarding the Večer poll as a fluke (no data to corroborate that particular poll has emerged), we can see that the relative difference between the left bloc (SD, Zares, LDS) and the right bloc (SDS, SLS, NSi) remains more or less the same, suggesting that the semi-wildly fluctuactions in parties’ rankings can be attributted to voter transition from one party to another, rather than from one political bloc to the other. This early in the game, this is definitely not good as it can lead to “voter fatigue” as well as extremely low blows from both sides.
Political added value will be in high demand this season, it seems.
Still to come this week: How the parties started campaiging. What keeps Jelinčič in high single digits. And who the fuck is Joško Joras?!?
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