Author: pengovsky

Delo ran a new poll yesterday, a month since pengovsky started following polls prior to autumn parliamentary elections. This poll is the first one done in a post-Clean Shovel enviroment and in this respect it is mildly surprising, to say the least.

Namely, there is no visible effect of the pre-dawn raids on construction powerplayers and supposed tax-evaders. What we are seeing, though, is a substaintial headway Zares seems to have made over LDS. How or why this happened is at this point a bit of a mistery – unless you are willing to subscribe to the theory that a battle for the legacy of the late Janez Drnovšek just ensewed and Zares won the first round.

In the duel between SD and SDS, things are interesting as well. As noted already, there was no spectacular gain on the part of SDS which we might be able to attribute to Operation Clean Shovel. So the rise in support for SDS can be considered “organic” in my view. The PM is on the news a lot lately (presiding the EU and all) and correspondingly the frequency of Borut Pahor seeing himself on the telly has fallen dramatically – there is only so much politics you can squeeze in the main news bulletin 🙂 On the other hand, Social Democrats are still bleeding support. Not at an alarming rate anyhow, but their strategists should not worry about their losses, but about gains SDS has made. Namely: if we took only Delo’s polls of yesterday and of a month ago, we see that SDS made substantial gains while SD kept on losing, even though it still kept the top spot.

Finally, we can now take a look at the entire month of February. As polls were made by different pollsters on different samples, the graph below is not exactly accurate, but it can give you a general idea of what is going on: SDS and SD continue breathing down each other’s necks, while the rest of the political gang fight for the leftovers – but there’s enough of that to go around as even those parties which are currently below the parliamentary treshold (the red dashed line) will – as things stand now – make it across to the safe territory. A notable exception to the rule is Zares, which pushed ahead of the “general populatation” and is loitering a coupe of percentage points above the rest of the parties, but is far far below the leading duo.

Pengovsky’s projection: I think we might still get to see a slight bump in SDS’s ratings as a result of the anti-corruption sweep, but it will not last long. But barring a major embarasment, the rise in support of the ruling party will continue, at least as long as the EU presidency lasts. Then the shit will hit the fan, and it the race will go down to the wire. Until then, however, the nine political parties (Lipa included, as it was formarlly established on Saturday) will want to secure the best possible starting positions.

So, we’ve got two new polls as of a couple of days ago. One by Večer daily and one by Ninamedia, each very different from the other. And while Ninamedia’s poll keeps within the broad trend shown by the other polls, Večer’s poll shows a staggeringly different result.

The thing that stands out the most with Večer poll is a large percentage of the undecided vote – even larger than in the Parsifal poll taken a week ago.Funny thing is, though, that both polls (Večer and Parsifal) show a similiarily high percentage of undecided voters and correspondingly low numbers for the two main rivals: Janez Janša‘s rulling Slovene Democratic Party (SDS) and Borut Pahor‘s opposition Social Democrats (SD). Furthermore, the SDS has a slight lead over SD, which is another similarity with the Parsifal poll. And if you look at the Episcenter poll, you’ll notice that this poll too records a lead of SDS over SD but a very low number of the undecided vote – very much like Ninamedia, which has the lowest number of undecided voters since this blog started summing up the polls (three weeks ago).

Now, it has to be noted, that Večer’s poll indicates a statistical error of some 3,5 percent, which means that results for NSi, DeSUS, SLS and Lipa are practically useless, as their results could vary significantly with a slighlty different sample. It would be interesting to see, however, statistical errors of the other polls. I suspect it is smaller as their sample is somewhat higher, but all-in-all this might prove to be a crucial piece of information. What is interesting, though, is the fact that two “camps” of polls seem to be developing. One with a high rate of the undecided vote and with the two main parties being tied (or with SDS slightly ahead), and the other with a smaller percentage of the undecided vote and with SD slightly ahead of SDS. The reason for it? Technically, I think we can put it down to a different sample. Is it political? Could be. Too early to tell…

Pengovsky’s projection:: Obviously the two main conteders remain the same and I suspect that as time passes the battle between SDS and SD will turn into a battle between Janez Janša and Borut Pahor. Further down the poll the nationalists seem to be comfortably running circles around the 5% mark, but we’ll see if Sašo Peče will steal the limelight as he and his renegade nationalists will officially form Slovenska lipa party on March 1. Another duel to watch is of course the LDS/Zares thing, where the latter seems to be ahead on the whole, but differences between the two parties are minimal. Given the peculiarities of Slovene voting body, I still think all of the polled parties will make it across the four-percent-treshold.