The campaign for December 4 parliamentary elections officially began on Friday and everyone more or less hit the ground running. Polls were again being published by the truckload and they further strengthen the notion that rarely in the history of democratic Slovenia has so much been at stake. In fact, the polls combined with some early below-the-belt punches create the notion that what we will be seeing in the next 28 days will not be just yet another election campaign, but rather a deathmatch.
Janković closes the gap a bit by virtue of losing less than Janša and Virant
Numbers
Let’s do a bit of number-crunching first: Citizens’ List of Gregor Virant and SDS of Janez Janša are interchanging at the top spot, while Pozitivna Slovenija of Zoran Janković is sticking to spot number three. DeSUS of Karl Erjavec and Social Democrats of PM Borut Pahor are hovering around the 4% threshold, while everyone else, including Zares, LDS and SNS are (still) below water, while only SLS occasionally makes ot above the surface. The irony is that no-one can really be happy with the situation. Parties of Gregor Golobič, Katarina Kresal, Radovan Žerjav, Ljudmila Novak and Zmago Jelinčič (Zares, LDS, SLS, NSi and SNS respectively) are fighting for survival and although they all proclaim they’ve no doubt about making it into the parliament, some will face the reality in a manner akin to hitting a brick wall.
Arguably, the guy who stands to lose most is Zmago Jelinčič. Leader of the nationalists used to be the resident joker, the political free-loader who won the disgruntled vote and occasionally threw in an actual policy issue or two, is in deep trouble as his voters are among the most fickle ones. They’ll vote for whomever they can relate to best, and in this respect Jelinčič is apparently losing ground to the other funny man of Slovene political arena: Karl Erjavec of DeSUS, who is no stranger to political stuntmanship, only he takes himself much more seriously. Not that moron-factor is any lower for that but still. Sure enough, Erjavec is on the brink as well, but in terms of survivability his odds are much better than Jelinčič’s.
Below the fold, however, LDS and Zares seem to be getting the short end of the stick. Both are increasingly being written of dead meat although it needs to be said that the lower the percentage, the more unreliable polls become (as Davor explained in Slovene in this comment). So it could be – and both Katarina Kresal and Gregor Golobič are counting on this – that their support is in fact much stronger than polls suggest. Only time will tell, but the downside of these polls is that they are being used as points of reference by TV stations when picking candidates and parties who get to have a seat at the debates (more on this in the coming days). Ditto for NSi and only slightly less so for SLS.
Of those who seem poised to make it, SDS and SD have the most stable result. Unless disaster strikes, Janša’s party looks poised to win at least around 18 to 20 percent, whereas Pahor’s party seems to have hit rock-bottom and will probably level out at about 8 to 10 percent. On the other hand, parties of Zoran Janković and Gregor Virant have their ratings all over the map and they need a good election result if they want to call the shots in forming the government.
Deathmatch
So, as you can see, a lot of people stand to either gain or lose quite a lot. In fact, if one is to expand the field of political impact beyond the immediate scope of election result, we see that there is not a political leader in Slovenia who doesn’t have to worry about political survival. Gergor Golobič, Katarina Kresal, Zmago Jelinčič, Ljudmila Novak and Radovan Žerjav are struggling to make it to the parliament. Karl Erjavec is close, above the fold, but always five minutes away from an in-party mutiny. Borut Pahor is trying to put on a brave face at the prospect of a disaster of epic proportions which would probably lead to his swift removal from the party helm. Janez Janša is being prosecuted in the Patria case. Gregor Virant is running on fluff and neither he nor his party would ever recover if their spell of mesmerizing media and voters was broken. And finally, Zoran Janković is risking it all by actually running for MP in a safe precinct in Ljubljana, which means that if his party doesn’t get enough votes he might end up stuck in parliament, losing his mayorship (there are slim chances of him getting out of this mess, but more on that some other time).
Average percentage scores computed from all polls
Projection
In other words, what we will be seeing for the next 20+ days will be a multi-way political death-match and – to use a quote from Top Gun – there are no points for second place. Well, there are points for anything above 4%, but you get the point. Carnage will be #epic.
N.B.: Data is compiled from different polls with different sets of questions and different samples, so it is not directly comparable from a scientific point of view. Data still available as .xml .xls file for download.
Around 10 percent definitely not voting, but any idea what polls are saying about likely turnout? Are these new parties likely to get more people voting do you think?
Also can you tells a bit more about Positive Slovenia and the Virant list? Looking over some of the PS candidates, they seem to include quite a few recycled Social Democrats. Old wine in new bottles?
According to the polls the turnout will be in the high 60s. Solid, but unimpressive.
I’ll post more on the newcomers’ lists (and others) but in a nutshell, you’re right to an extent. A couple of fairly prominent people switched to Janković, trying to escape the inevitable ass-whooping the Social Democrats are about to get. But there’s more history than meets the eye.