Notes on recent elections
The 2012 parliamentary elections in Slovakia
Peter Spác*
Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University in Brno, Jostova 10, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 2 October 2012
Accepted 4 July 2013
1. Background
After the 2010 elections a centre-right government led
by Iveta Radicová was formed. For the first time in Slovakia’s
history a woman occupied the post of prime minister.
The greatest challenge for the government was to its internal
stability. Though formally it was composed of four
parties, in reality two other parties were involved, namely
the Civic Conservative Party (in Slovak: Obcianska konzervatívna
strana; OKS) and the civic movement Ordinary
People (Obycajní ludia; OL). Both of these had placed their
candidates on the lists of bigger parties, and each elected
four MPs. The stability of the government was thus questionable
from the beginning.
This situation was partly analogous to the second government
of Mikulás Dzurinda in the years 2002–2006. In
both cases these were centre-right cabinets with the Slovak
Democratic and Christian Union – Democratic Party (Slovenská
demokratická a krestanská únia – Demokratická
strana; SDKÚ-DS) as their strongest member. They both
comprised a larger number of parties, and they also shared
a similar fate, proving unable to last out the whole electoral
term. On the other hand, the two governments differed
vastly in their economic policies. While Dzurinda was able
to enact strong liberal reforms on taxes and health care,
Radicová’s government was more cautious. It did not
greatly modify the generous social policy of the previous
government led by Smer-SD and, when dealing with the
impact of economic crisis, it even planned to raise taxes on
entrepreneurs and other social groups.
The critical events that led to the end of Radicová’s
government related to the increasing bailout powers
sought by the European Union to address the Eurozone
crisis. The party Freedom and Solidarity (Sloboda a solidarita;
SaS) refused to follow its coalition partners in
voting to join a permanent European Financial Stability
Facility. The final vote held in parliament in October 2011
was linked to a vote of confidence and so the SaS was
thus forced either to back down or to let the cabinet fall.
The party chose the latter. After the vote, the other
members of the government along with Smer-SD agreed
to hold early elections in 2012. As for EFSF, a new vote
was held shortly after the first attempt, and this time
with the support of Smer-SD the idea won overwhelming
support. The new campaign thus started in autumn 2011,
not even eighteen months after the previous parliamentary
elections.
2. Electoral system
The electoral system used for the 2012 elections
remained completely unchanged. Slovakia uses a proportional
representation system with a single nationwide
constituency from which all 150 members of parliament
are elected. Each party must cross the 5% threshold to gain
seats, and this barrier is slightly higher for coalitions. The
Hagenbach-Bischoff quota is used for the allocation of
seats. These features together guarantee a very high level of
proportionality of distribution. As for the vote itself, flexible
ballots are used, and voters can cast up to four preferential
votes. However, the influence of preferential voting remains
limited, as most votes are given to party leaders and
other highly-ranked candidates (Spác, 2010, 65–75).
* Tel.: þ420 608 072 084, þ421 908 123 874.
E-mail address: spac.peter@gmail.com.
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Electoral Studies 33 (2014) 343–356
3. Parties and the campaign
The fall of the Radicová government brought some
changes in the party system but did not disrupt many of its
previous features and trends. Smer-SD gained the most
from the whole situation and secured its dominant position.
Robert Fico used the government conflicts to present
his own party as a guarantor of stability. He accused the
parties of Radicová’s government of being unreliable and
incapable of coming to agreement on essential topics.
These appeals were also reflected in public support as
Smer-SD’s rating stabilized above 40 percent. Indeed, the
polls began to indicate a real chance that Smer-SD would
become the first Slovak party after 1989 to gain a majority
of seats in parliament.
The fall of the government weakened the centre-right
parties, and their public support has dropped since the
2010 elections. The events of autumn 2011 were not the
sole reason for this, however. Another important reason
was the government’s economic policy, which was a great
disappointment to its voters. The moderation of Radicová’s
government in this area was even more striking when
compared to liberal reforms made by the centre-right
cabinet in 2002–2006. So the unsuccessful EFSF vote only
accelerated an ongoing downward trend in the centreright’s
popularity. The fall of the government also damaged
morale among its members and SaS found itself somewhat
isolated. Although this tension gradually eased, the centreright
parties did not enter the 2012 elections as a compact
bloc.
A new rival to these parties also appeared. An unofficial
member of Radicová’s government, the civic movement OL,
had got into parliament in 2010 by placing its members on
the SaS ballot. Although these two parties formed a joined
parliamentary group their relations were far from harmonious.
When the government tried to change a controversial
law on citizenship which had been passed by the
previous cabinet, the leader of OL, Igor Matovic, refused to
go along with the plan. As a result he was expelled from the
parliamentary group of SaS. After the fall of the government
OL was transformed into a political party, but one of an
unconventional nature. Its main goal was to function as a
platform for important personalities, most of whom were
not even members of the party. This aim was proclaimed in
the new name of the group, which was Ordinary People
and Independent Personalities (Obycajní ludia a nezávislé
osobnosti; OLaNO). The new party did not define its position
in ideological terms, and the same applied to its program,
which contained a mix of conservative, liberal, social
and populist messages. However, as the party had been
connected to Radicová’s government, it became a direct
rival mainly to the centre-right parties.
The party spectrum before the 2012 elections thus
provided an interesting display. On one hand there was
Smer-SD, which was without any doubt expected to be a
clear winner. Against it was a fragmented centre-right
group of parties, which also faced a new rival unencumbered
by previous scandals. Some of these parties were far
from guaranteed to make it into the next parliament. This
also went for the Slovak National Party (Slovenská národná
strana; SNS). In the previous 2010 elections the nationalists
had barely crossed the 5 percent threshold, as an important
segment of their vote turned to Smer-SD (Krivý, 2011). As
an opposition party, the SNS was unable to reverse these
trends, and before the 2012 elections it was again at risk of
losing its parliamentary status. Thus, while the winner was
clear, there were still plenty of unknowns as the election
approached.
Although less than two years had passed since the 2010
elections, the content of the campaign in 2012 was largely
different. At first it seemed that the EU bailout issue would
be as highly salient as it had been two years earlier. In 2010
this question was mainly associated with the case of Greece
(Godársky, 2011) and it was used mostly by the centre-right
parties. Their intentions before the 2010 elections were
quite clear: to point to the large deficits produced by the
Fico’s government and to warn voters of the danger of
following the “Greek road” (Deegan-Krause and Haughton,
2011). Following the EFSF vote in the Slovak parliament, the
treatment of this topic became more complex in the 2012
campaign, now encompassing the whole issue of Slovakia’s
role in such processes. Out of all the parties the SaS was
able to profit most from these debates, as it rejected
outright the idea of giving such help to other EU countries.
With this position it played the role of protector of the
economic interests of Slovakia and its citizens.
However, the topic of EFSF was pushed into the background
and replaced by the issue of corruption once after
the so-called Gorilla case was revealed. “Gorilla” was the
code name of an operation by the Slovak security services
aimed at monitoring the activities of an influential domestic
financial group during 2005 and 2006. Unofficial
documents which leaked into the public domain indicated
strong links between the economic and political spheres,
providing the backdrop for vast corruption. Every relevant
political party in existence at the time was mentioned in
these documents but the greatest pressure was put on the
main party then in the government: the SDKÚ-DS. Gorilla
proved to be an effective campaign weapon for the new
parties. OLaNO in particular cited the case as proof of the
corrupt character of the current elite, and the need to
replace it with a new political generation.
The Gorilla case greatly affected the campaign. Its influence
was so profound that it superseded many of the
topics traditionally dominating Slovak elections. The issue
of Slovak–Hungarian relations, the main theme of the
xenophobic SNS in the past, was visibly less important in
2012. The same applied to issues along the socioeconomic
dimension. Unlike in the 2006 and 2010 elections the
parties were not primarily divided based on left-right position
(Rybár, 2007; Deegan-Krause and Haughton, 2011)
but instead based on their involvement with the Gorilla
affair. One of the consequences of this was that the main
centre-right parties did not rule out cooperation with
Smer-SD after the elections, as they had unanimously done
before the 2010 elections (Gyárfásová, 2012; Meseznikov,
2012).
Another feature that set apart the campaigns of 2010
and 2012 was the presence of the civic sector. One legacy of
the illiberal governance of Vladimír Meciar and his People’s
Party – Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (Ludová
strana – Hnutie za demokratické Slovensko; LS-HZDS) in
Notes on recent elections / Electoral Studies 33 (2014) 343–356344
the 1990s was a connection between the centre-right
parties and domestic intellectuals and artists. This link
still proved to be functioning before the 2010 elections,
when many well-known personalities spontaneously
became involved in the campaign, mostly in order to
oppose Robert Fico. For example, the caricaturist Shooty
from the popular gazette Sme launched a public collection
for funds that were then used to pay for hundreds of billboards,
postcards, and stickers with overt political messages
against Smer-SD and its coalition partners SNS and
LS-HZDS. Before the 2012 elections such activities were
largely absent, further emphasizing the disappointment
with Radicová’s government.
4. Results
Turnout in the elections was just over 59%, almost the
same as in 2010. As expected, Smer-SD won the elections
with 44.4% and, as Table 1 shows, the victory was overwhelming.
Compared to its performance in previous elections,
the party as led by Robert Fico did even better and in
fact achieved the best result in terms of vote share for any
party in Slovakia since 1989. As for absolute numbers,
Smer-SD received 1.13 million votes, bettered only by LSHZDS
in 1992 with 1.14 million. Although Smer-SD did not
obtain 50% of votes, it was able to achieve a clear majority
of 83 out of 150 seats due to the effect of the legal threshold
which prevents parties under 5% from entering parliament.
The dominance of Smer-SD was also visible in geographical
terms. While in the past this party had been slightly weaker
in the biggest cities including the capital Bratislava, and in
regions with a larger proportion of ethnic Hungarians
(Madlenák, 2012: 82–88), in 2012 the party polled more
consistently across the map of Slovakia. The campaign of
Smer-SD under the slogan “Securities” proved to be
well suited to an era of world economic crisis and its
consequences.
The 2012 elections confirmed the decline of the centreright
parties, especially SDKÚ-DS. Mikulás Dzurinda’s party
was hard hit by the Gorilla affair and in the last months
before the elections its support radically diminished. Its
result of 6.1% was a real disaster, as the previously dominant
force on the centre right was forced to accept the role
of a small party. The parties Bridge (Most-Híd) and Christian
Democratic Movement (Krestanskodemokratické
hnutie; KDH) also failed to score well, the Christian democrats
in particular falling short of their anticipated vote
share. Most-Híd could at least be gratified by the fact that it
remained the only parliamentary party directly representing
the Hungarian minority, as the once-powerful
Party of Hungarian Coalition (Strana madarskej koalície;
SMK) got only slightly more than 4% of the vote. A significant
decline was also suffered by the SaS, which was the
weakest party to cross the 5% threshold. Although its result
of 5.9% could be considered a failure, the liberals were at
least able to avoid the fate of many of the new Slovak
parties that have failed to retain their parliamentary status
after entering government.
As in the 2010 elections, likewise in 2012 a new party
entered the parliament. In this case it was OLaNO which,
with more than 8.5%, came in third after Smer-SD and KDH.
The image of a party clean of financial scandals proved to be
an attractive one, especially for the disappointed voters of
the centre-right parties. Meanwhile, the SNS ended up out
of parliament as it got only 4.6% of the vote. The nationalists
could not prevent their voters from moving to other parties,
especially Smer-SD. The elections also confirmed the longterm
decline of Meciar’s LS-HZDS. Formerly the dominant
political actor in Slovakia, it gained less than 1% of the vote,
which led to discussion of whether or not to dissolve the
party. Another unsuccessful party was the 99% – Civic voice
(99% – Obciansky hlas), whose name alluded to the “We are
the 99%” slogan of Occupy Wall Street protestors in USA.
During the campaign the party was accused of faking
petition signatures in order to allow candidates to compete
in the elections. Even without this scandal, however, it
seems unlikely that 99% would have made it into parliament,
since it won only 1.5% of votes.
Compared to previous elections, the preferential voting
element of the system played a more important role.
Altogether 15 MPs got into parliament thanks to preferential
votes, the largest number since the introduction of
Table 1
Results of the parliamentary elections in the Slovak Republic, 10 March 2012.
Party Votes Votes (%) Change 2010 Seats Change 2010
Smer-SD (Direction-Social Democracy) 1,134,280 44.4 9.6 83 21
KDH (Christian Democratic Movement) 225,361 8.8 0.3 16 1
OLaNO (Ordinary People and Independent
Personalities)
218,537 8.6 8.6 16 16
Most-Híd (Bridge) 176,088 6.9 À1.2 13 À1
SDKÚ-DS (Slovak Democratic and Christian
Union – Democratic Party)
155,744 6.1 À9.3 11 À17
SaS (Freedom and Solidarity) 150,266 5.9 À6.3 11 À11
SNS (Slovak National Party) 116,420 4.6 À0.5 0 À9
SMK (Party of the Hungarian Coalition) 109,483 4.3 0 0 0
99% (99% – the Civic Voice) 40,488 1.6 1.6 0 0
Other parties 227,059 8.8 4.8 0 0
Total 2,553,726 100 0 150 0
Parties not crossing threshold 493,450 19.3 3.4
Turnout 59.1 0.3
Source: Slovak Statistical Office (2012).
Notes on recent elections / Electoral Studies 33 (2014) 343–356 345
the nationwide constituency. This indicates that voters are
to some extent able to enforce their will against the parties.
On the other hand, there is no need for excessive optimism
in this regard. First, four of those 15 MPs were the leaders of
OLaNO. They were placed on the last four positions of the
party’s ballot deliberately, and this step was understood as
a part of their marketing. The outcome of the preferential
voting was also strongly determined by the fragmentation
of the centre-right. Five parties got into parliament with
less than 10% of the vote and so were not entitled to many
representatives based on a purely proportional allocation.
This meant that their candidates were more dependent on
preferential votes. For example, three candidates each from
SDKÚ-DS and SaS won seats in parliament thanks to preferential
voting. If these parties had the same vote share as
in 2010, all six candidates would have become MPs even
without any preferential votes.
The electoral results made the formation of a government
easy. The only dilemma was whether Smer-SD would
form a one-party government or seek coalition partners.
This question was quickly resolved as the other parties
refused to cooperate with the Smer-SD, realizing that its
position in any such partnership would be dominant. SmerSD
thus formed its own government at the beginning of
April, being Slovakia’s first single-party majority government
since 1989. However, it seems that the absence of
political partners to share responsibility with Smer-SD will
be mitigated by bringing nonpartisan collective actors –
such as the trade unions, employees, and other representatives
of various groups – into policy making. The oneparty
government of social democratic Smer-SD may
therefore move Slovakia toward a more neo-corporatist
model.
5. Implications
The 2012 Slovak elections brought many interesting
moments. For the first time, a single party gained a majority
in parliament and formed a one-party government. In just
ten years of existence, Smer-SD succeeded in becoming the
dominant party in the system. Its showing in 2012 is undoubtedly
a success but raises the question of whether
Smer-SD will be able to maintain such levels of public
support. Single-party government allows Smer-SD to
implement its programme at will but also means that it will
have to take full responsibility for the government’s policies
and their consequences. However, when compared to
Meciar’s LS-HZDS which was once in a similar position,
Smer-SD has better prospects of living on as a dominant
force. Its advantage is that it is a clearly defined social
democratic party, and is largely accepted as such by voters,
unlike the LS-HZDS which never succeeded in becoming a
party connected to a certain ideology – its support
depended mainly on its leader.
The 2012 elections were a great failure for the centreright
parties, and this had clear consequences. Mikulás
Dzurinda, leader of SDKÚ-DS since it began in 2000,
refused to run again for the position. Popular KDH vicechairman
Daniel Lipsic, who got the most preferential
votes of all the party’s candidates, left the party. In
September 2012 he founded his own party called New
Majority, which is expected to be a relevant rival to the
current opposition. Thus, although the elections highlighted
the decline of the Slovak centre-right, they also may
be the starting point for a thorough reconstruction process.
The last point concerns the electoral system. In Slovakia
only a simple majority in parliament is required to change
it, which means that Smer-SD in effect has control of this
system. In the past Robert Fico has declared that the
threshold for smaller parties to enter parliament should be
higher, and has leaned towards the idea of a majority or a
mixed system. Although after the 2012 elections Smer-SD
stated that no major changes in the electoral system will
be made without the agreement of the parliamentary opposition,
this assurance should be taken with some caution.
It will be interesting to see whether Smer-SD tries to push
through an electoral reform leading to higher disproportionality,
especially if its public support begins to
decline.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2013.07.006
Notes on recent elections / Electoral Studies 33 (2014) 343–356346