Slovak Elections and Politics | Fico the Fourth 🇸🇰

[rob in cal]

Hardly anything from Bratislava yet. Reminds me of Virginia vote reporting.

[rob in cal]

Even with big Bratislava dumps coming this looks like Pellegrinis won.

[Storr]

Denník N model projection has it at PP 50.4%, Korcok 49.6%.
Way too close to call.

Currently they have it at PP 51.8%, Korcok 48.2%.

[rob in cal]

Bratislava 20% in.

[Estrella]

80% in and the numbers moved only slightly — Pelle 56.7% and Korčok 43.3%. Looking very good for Pelle, although his margin will go down.

[jaichind]

Dennikn model now has Pellegrini at 53.4 for the win

[rob in cal]

Interesting to see the final results in ethnic Hungarian areas.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Interesting to see the final results in ethnic Hungarian areas.

The Hungarian vote could swing a race this close, right?

[PSOL]

Let’s go Pelle!

[Estrella]

Interesting to see the final results in ethnic Hungarian areas.

The Hungarian vote could swing a race this close, right?

It's probably not gonna be that close – Pelle gained a lot from elsewhere – but if Hungarians voted like they used to with like 70/80/90% for the liberal candidate, it would be pretty much 50/50, so they did play a role.

[RGM2609]

Yikes. Tough year for Slovakia's liberals, pro-Westerners, and generally pro-sanity people.

[Estrella]

Let’s go Pelle!

Eagerly awaiting your endorsements of Le Pen and AfD.

[RGM2609]

Let’s go Pelle!

Eagerly awaiting your endorsements of Le Pen and AfD.

There's nothing I would put beyond these tankies in this day and age. We live in crazy times.

[Storr]

Yikes. Tough year for Slovakia's liberals, pro-Westerners, and generally pro-sanity people.

I can’t wait for all of the “Is Slovakia the next Hungary?” panic articles.

Edit: While obviously this result isn’t good for Slovakia’s democracy. At least Fico and his band of clowns do not have a supermajority like Fidesz in Hungary after the 2010 election. So they cannot enact Constitutional changes similar to Hungary which have allowed Orban to keep power.

Edit 2: After looking it up, evidently a Constitutional majority is 2/3 in Hungary, while 3/5 in Slovakia. Only a 60% majority needed to change the Constitution feels low to me, but what do I know?

[RGM2609]

Yikes. Tough year for Slovakia's liberals, pro-Westerners, and generally pro-sanity people.

I can’t wait for all of the “Is Slovakia the next Hungary?” panic articles.

Unrelated, but it's funny how Slovakia and Hungary seem to be the only countries inclined to support Iohannis's idiotic NATO candidacy.

[Estrella]

RTVS poll: Korčok 51.1%, Pellegrini 48.9%, turnout estimate 55%.

After last year’s parliamentary exit polling flop, I’ve learned not to get my hopes up when it comes to Slovak polling. Despite that, it’s not a bad thing that Korčok is leading in an exit poll.

Idk, the first round not-actually-exit-poll underestimated Pelle by 2 and Korčok by like 8, but it would be completely in character for Slovak polling to be wrong in the opposite direction for no reason.

I am calling for a total and complete shutdown of Slovak polling industry until we can figure out what is going on.

[Mike88]

Ugh.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This was unexpected.

[PSOL]

This was unexpected.

It really wasn’t. Regardless of signaling Pelle is a normie euro socdem. I await the improvement of LGBTQ+ rights.

Let’s go Pelle!

Eagerly awaiting your endorsements of Le Pen and AfD.

There's nothing I would put beyond these tankies in this day and age. We live in crazy times.

lol

Ftr, Sara Wagenekhts signaling is really putting me down from voting in Germany. They have the chance to replicate PTB/PVDA’s success but you can’t do that by engaging in capitalist identity politics.

[warandwar]

historically speaking it's pretty normal for socdem parties to have terrible politics about migrants, bend over to appease social conservatism, etc. Starmer's doing both right now in the uk. Main difference is their respective positions on ukraine. That's why i'm not a social democrat.
Definitely interested in the maps and age cross tabs.

[Estrella]

Both candidates' speeches were just awful. Korčok had a long, rambling, disjointed and angry rant about how he's disappointed that you can win with a campaign of stoking fear funded by dark money... which is absolutely true, but you shouldn't make your entire concession speech about it. Pelle's victory speech was even more chaotic, but the gist of it was that he's going help the government in all its efforts and he'll "never support war", no matter what anyone else thinks. After a few minutes he handed over the stage to Fico, who boasted about how "this is how you do it, goddamnit", how this was a referendum on government's policies and obviously the expected rants about how Slovak people woke up to the threat posed by activists, media, liberals, NGOs, progressives and so on.

Btw, the presenter on TV Markíza mentioned that their Tuesday debate – the one where Korčok had probably his worst performance – was watched by 700,000 people, so it probably had a big impact.

historically speaking it's pretty normal for socdem parties to have terrible politics about migrants, bend over to appease social conservatism, etc. Starmer's doing both right now in the uk. Main difference is their respective positions on ukraine. That's why i'm not a social democrat.
Definitely interested in the maps and age cross tabs.

Did Keir Starmer move so far to the right he was endorsed by BNP and EDL? Did half of the shadow cabinet go on a podcast hosted by the leader of National Action? Because that's what we're talking about here.

[Estrella]

It really wasn’t. Regardless of signaling Pelle is a normie euro socdem. I await the improvement of LGBTQ+ rights.

An improvement of LGBTQ+ rights like the one that happened a few days ago when a minister from Pellegrini's party went out of her way to make legally changing gender harder (actually she just repealed a regulation without introducing a new one, so it might in fact be impossible) to make sure her boss gets the endorsement of the far-right?

[RGM2609]

Eh, why not make your speech about what you're actually thinking at this point? It's not like Korcok has any political future lmao

[Antonio the Sixth]

Huh. It wasn't even that close in the end. I guess this is a reality check against momentum and vibes vs cold hard math when it comes to predicting elections. The "fundamentals" were clearly favoring Pellegrini even if he ran a seemingly abysmal campaign.

I guess I don't care much about the outcome after all. Korčok would have been better on the international stage, but in the end it's Fico pulling the strings either way. And neither he nor Pellegrini can afford to rock the boat too much.

[Estrella]

Here are the final results.

	Result	+/- first round	+/- 2019 runoff
Turnout	2,671,279 (61.1%)	+403,510 (+9.2)	+823,862 (+19.3)
Pellegrini	1,409,255 (53.1%)	+574,537 (+16.1)	+656,852 (+11.5)
Korčok	1,243,709 (46.9%)	+285,316 (+4.4)	+352,673 (–11.5)

It's turnout that won it for Pelle. Highest participation since the first direct election in 1999, and the first time since then both candidates got over one million votes. As for the result itself, turnout aside it's more or less what I and most people would have expected until like a week before the first round (and what polls were saying back then, not that you shouldn't chuck them into the trash anyway). It is surprising considering what happened in the first round and how inept Pelle's campaign was until the last few days, but it makes sense considering Pelle's sudden but highly successful anti-Western turn, his anti-Ukraine/anti-NATO scare campaign and his outreach to the extreme right (or more accurately just a wholesale adoption of Harabin/Republika policies).

So both candidates outran the polls. This isn't going to be enough for Korčok though. Expecting Pelle to win the runoff 55-45-ish, perhaps a bit more narrow.

You were right, just not for the reasons you (or anyone) expected then

Tbh this is a great accomplishment by Pelle, and I don't mean just the numbers. At the age of 48, he has served as an MP for stints spanning nearly two decades, held multiple ministerial positions, served two stints as Speaker, two years as Prime Minister and now he'll be President. That's an objectively impressive career.