Liberal party Progressive Slovakia (PS), led by Vice Chairman of the European Parliament Michal Simecka, leads ahead of the snap vote to be held in Slovakia on September 30, a final poll by NMS Market Research Slovakia shows, while two other polls show the leftwing populist Smer party of former premier Robert Fico, who has vowed to end Slovakia’s military support of Ukraine, still holding a narrow lead.

According to all three polls PS would have a better chance of forming a broad coalition government with a majority. 

Wednesday is the last day polls can be published. President Zuzana Caputova has said she will follow precedent and nominate the leader of the biggest party to have the first chance at forming a government.

According to the NMS Market poll,  PS would win the vote with 19.7%, just 0.3 percentage points ahead of Smer (19.4%). Smer’s breakaway party, leftist Hlas (10.5%) of Robert Pellegrini, would come in third, followed by the three-party-coalition led by populist OLaNO (9.5%), and far-right Republika (8.5%).

Another four parties would narrowly cross the 5% threshold needed to enter the Slovak National Council (parliament) in this order – neoliberal SaS (5.7%), ultranationalist SNS (5.4%), Christian democratic KDH (5.4%) and conservative populist Sme rodina (5.2%).

Parties below the 5% threshold are the Hungarian minority party Aliancia (3.1%), liberal right-wing Democrats (2.3%), neofascist LSNS, and another Hungarian minority party Most-Hid (1.1%).

PS would be able to form a majority-backed coalition under these figures in a coalition with Hlas, SaS, KDH and at least one of the populist parties – OLaNO or Sme rodina.  

Smer might be able to form a government with Hlas, SNS and Sme Rodina, backed by Republika, but this looks more difficult.

Another poll published by Focus still puts Smer ahead with 18%, followed by PS (16.6%). In the Focus poll the other parties rank as follows: Hlas (13.7%), OLaNO-led coalition (8.2%), Republika (7.7%), KDH (6.5%), SNS (6.4%), and SaS (5.8%). According to the Focus poll, Sme rodina (4.1%), Democrats (4%), Aliancia (3.5%) would not make it into the parliament. 

The last poll by Ipsos published on Wednesday puts Smer (20.6%) in a marginal lead ahead of PS (19.8%). The two rivals are followed by Hlas (11.9%), OLaNO-led coalition (8.2%), Republika (7.6%), SaS (7%), KDH (5.9%), SNS (5.7%). Ipsos poll also puts Sme rodina (4%) below the 5% threshold as well as Aliancia (3.4%) and the Democrats (3.3%).