Exit polls: Opposition appears to be winning Slovakia vote

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) - Two exit polls showed late Saturday that Slovakia’s opposition appears to be winning parliamentary elections widely expected to unseat the long-dominant but scandal-tainted leftist party that governed on an anti-immigration platform.

The polls by the Focus and Median.sk agencies have the conservative Ordinary People party getting over 25% support and the ruling leftist Smer-Social Democracy led by former populist Prime Minister Robert Fico getting between 13.9% and 14.9%.

The result would mean that Ordinary People could create a majority government with at least three other center-right parties and unseat the Smer.

In a further blow for Smer, the polls suggested that Fico’s current coalition partners, the ultra-nationalist Slovak National Party and a party of ethnic Hungarians, would not win any seats.

An extreme far-right party whose members use Nazi salutes and which wants Slovakia out of the European Union and NATO seemed to receive between 6.5% and 8.8% support. In a shocking result four years ago, the far-right People’s Party Our Slovakia won 8% and 14 seats in the 150-seat Parliament.

All other parties have ruled out cooperation with the party that advocates the legacy of the Slovak Nazi puppet WWII state.

Led by Igor Matovic, 46, the Ordinary People made fighting corruption and attacking Fico the central tenets of its campaign. An anti-corruption drive has been in the party’s program since Matovic established it 10 years ago.

If he wins as predicted, Matovic is the likeliest candidate for prime minister. He is expected to govern with a coalition of the liberal Progressive Slovakia/Together, the conservative For People established by former President Andrej Kiska, and the pro-business Freedom and Solidarity party that would all gain seats..

Fico’s Smer has been in power for most of the past 14 years and won big all the parliamentary elections since 2006. It gained 28.3% in the last elections in 2016 after campaigning on an anti-migrant ticket. But the party was damaged by political turmoil following the 2018 slayings of an investigative journalist and his fiancée.