The March 2016 parliamentary elections in Slovakia: A political
earthquake
Marek Rybar a, *
, Peter Spac b
a
Department of Political Science, Faculty of Arts, Comenius University Bratislava, Gondova 2, 81499 Bratislava, Slovakia
b
Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University in Brno, Jostova 10, 602 00 Brno, Czechia
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 29 September 2016
Accepted 3 October 2016
Available online xxx
Keywords:
Slovakia
Parliamentary elections
Radical right
Coalition negotiations
a b s t r a c t
The 2016 parliamentary elections in Slovakia brought important changes to the composition of parliament
and resulted in an innovative four-party government. The leftist Smer-SD came on top but suffered
substantial losses compared to 2012. It managed to form a government with three other parties, one of
them representing the traditional Slovak nationalists while another being the leading representative of
Slovakia's largest ethnic minority. The new coalition government downplays its internal divisions and
claims it can provide stability in difficult international political situations, innovative policies in fighting
corruption, and rejection of political extremism and radicalism. The opposition is fragmented and
divided: it is composed of the two new radical right parties and two more moderate conservative-liberal
groupings.
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
High levels of electoral volatility and the regular electoral success
of new political parties have characterized Slovak party politics
since the early days of post-communist competitive democratic
politics. Parliamentary parties come and go, yet the two-camp logic
of party competition and government formation have provided
some level of stability and predictability. In this sense the parliamentary
elections that took place on March 5, 2016 represent a
turning point and an electoral earthquake, even by East European
standards: they produced many losers, a few and mostly unexpected
winners, opened up new divides, and led to a highly fragmented
parliament and an innovative four-party coalition
government.
2. Background
In the 2012 general election, the leftist party Smer e Social
Democracy (Smer-SD) gained a majority in parliament and a singleparty
government was formed for the first time in Slovak modern
history. The party won the general election for the third time in a
row with a clear margin over its rivals. The centre-right parties who
participated in the previous cabinet of Iveta Radicova, now joined
by the new populist and anti-establishment movement Ordinary
People and Independent Personalities (OLaNO), lowered their
previous gains and ended up in opposition (Rybar and Spac, 2015).
The electoral results allowed Smer-SD to gain substantial control
over daily politics. Backed by its loyal parliamentary group of
83 MPs (out of 150) the party was able to pursue its priorities (Misík
and Plenta, 2014) without any obstacles and to place its nominees
into several key state institutions. Since its emergence in 1999,
Smer-SD showed considerable internal stability and this did not
change after 2012 election. In contrast to the previous centre-right
government, the cabinet led by Robert Fico was rather absent of any
internal clashes and this was promoted to the voters as a crucial
advantage over coalition bargaining from the past. As its key objectives,
the government promoted the country's economic growth,
lowering the impact of the economic crisis and enhancing social
well-being of citizens.
Although Smer-SD maintained a high level of support among
voters during most of its term, some signs of the weakening of its
dominance can be observed. At the end of 2013, Prime Minister Fico
announced that he would run for president in March 2014. Despite
the initial polls indicating his victory, Fico lost to non-partisan
Andrej Kiska in the run-off (Rybar et al., 2014). The government
also faced several scandals, mainly in the area of healthcare. In
autumn 2014, after one instance of such corrupt behaviour was
revealed, some figures from the ruling party, including the Speaker
of Slovak Parliament and vice-chairman of Smer-SD Pavol Paska,
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: marek.rybar@gmail.com, marek.rybar@uniba.sk (M. Rybar),
spac.peter@gmail.com (P. Spac).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Electoral Studies
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/electstud
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2016.10.010
0261-3794/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Electoral Studies xxx (2016) 1e4
Please cite this article in press as: Rybar, M., Spac, P., The March 2016 parliamentary elections in Slovakia: A political earthquake, Electoral
Studies (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2016.10.010
were forced to resign. The ruling party reacted to the decrease in its
support by adopting a series of so-called social packages, i.e. sets of
social measures predominantly aimed at helping lower income
groups and, after summer 2015, by stressing the topic of migration
crisis (see below).
In contrast to Smer-SD, which managed to absorb smaller leftist
parties more than a decade ago (cf. Kopecek, 2007), the opposition
consisting of centre-right parties remained fragmented after the
2012 election. Despite their poor showing in the election, only a few
made any personal changes. Mikulas Dzurinda, former Prime
Minister and long-time leader of Slovak Democratic and Christian
Union e Democratic Party (SDKU-DS), resigned. Out of all of the
parties, SDKU-DS was crippled the most when the so-called Gorilla
scandal, a case which unveiled corrupt practices during the SDKUDS
reign, came to light. The party selected a new leader, Pavol Freso,
however its profile was too damaged and its support continued to
fade. Other centre-right parties did not follow suit and kept their
leaders in office. The opportunities for further cooperation in the
opposition camp were also disturbed as most of the parties blamed
the liberal Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) and its leader Richard Sulík
for an early end of the previous cabinet led by Iveta Radicova.
To add to the fragmentation of the opposition, two new parties
had emerged during the previous electoral term. Several months
after the general election, Daniel Lipsic, a prominent representative
of the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH), left its ranks and
created his own party, New Majority (NOVA), with stress on appeals
of anti-corruption and justice. In the beginning of 2013, KDH lost
another elite figure. After an unsuccessful attempt to reform the
party, Radoslav Prochazka, a prominent lawyer and MP, left KDH
and shortly after announced his candidacy for president. Although
he did pass into the runoff, his encouraging result led him to start
his own party, Network (Sie
0
t), in summer 2014. Hence, compared
to the monolithic Smer-SD, the centre-right opposition consisted of
seven subjects, each of them well behind the ruling party in the
polls.
Unlike most of the centre-right, the nationalist Slovak National
Party (SNS) underwent major changes: in a “hostile takeover”
Andrej Danko replaced its long-time leader Jan Slota. Under his
leadership the party officially claimed to rid itself of its past loaded
with corrupt behaviour and scandals. The new leadership even
expelled Jan Slota from the party, citing misuse of party finances.
Although the ideological and personnel transformation of SNS was
rather verbal in character, its support started to improve and since
2015 the polls have showed the party steadily above the five per
cent threshold. For the ruling Smer-SD this meant a higher probability
of staying in government even after the 2016 election, as its
former junior coalition partner was on its way to becoming a parliamentary
party again.
3. Electoral system
The electoral system experienced no changes since the last
general election. Slovakia uses a PR system with the threshold set at
five per cent. In 1998, the country adopted a single nationwide
constituency from which all 150 MPs are elected. The enormous
magnitude of the constituency guarantees very proportional results
towards all parties able to cross the threshold. Party ballots are
flexible and voters are allowed to cast up to four preferential votes.
With ballots consisting of up to 150 candidates, however, only a
limited amount of nominees can obtain seats based on preferential
voting. Mainly due to the size of the lists, voters tend to support top
listed candidates and thus tend to back the ranking provided by
parties (cf. Spac, 2016).
4. Campaign
In the previous two decades, party competition evolved around
two main themes: the role of the market and issues related to
national identity (Deegan-Krause and Haughton, 2012). Since about
2010, an anti-corruption agenda strongly supplemented these
party divides. Smer, mastering a single-party majority in the
2012e2016 parliament, campaigned on the economic successes of
its government: decreasing levels of unemployment, its ability to
attract doses of foreign direct investments, and the growth of real
wages.
The centre-right opposition objected that these economic results
were achieved at the expense of a growing budget deficit and
were thus unsustainable. Moreover, they utilized the growing
number of suspicions of corrupt behaviour in various public bodies
to highlight the incompetence of the Smer-led government. Smer
reacted by replacing several of its top representatives, including the
Speaker of Parliament and the Minister of Healthcare, in an effort to
pre-empt public dissatisfaction. In addition, the party promised it
would expand free public services and increase public spending in
the subsequent electoral period. The so-called “social package”
promised, among other things, to create 100,000 new jobs, more
subsidies for public transport and to spend more on low-income
groups like pensioners, disabled and young people and teachers.
The main electoral message of Smer, however, seems to relate to
the questions of national identity and its protection. While in the
previous elections the party did not shy away from scapegoating
ethnic minorities, especially ethnic Hungarians, protection of people
against what it called “uncontrolled migration of Muslims to
Europe” dominated the 2016 campaign. Smer leader Fico claimed
that a majority of migrants were economically motivated, that they
represented a security threat and that his government would do
everything to prevent their settlement in Slovakia. His government
resented the agreed-upon EU mechanism to relocate asylum
seekers among EU countries and filled a complaint to the European
Court of Justice. Most of the opposition parties agreed that EU-wide
“migrant quotas” were inefficient but criticised the government for
what they perceived were activities harmful to Slovakia's external
relations. They also claimed Smer was misusing the migration crisis
to divert attention from more pressing domestic issues.
Probably the most damaging to the Smer campaign were the
activities of dissatisfied teachers and nurses from public hospitals
who started their protest activities just weeks before the elections.
They demanded higher wages and more investments into education
and healthcare. Smer politicians stuck to their main campaign
message - focus on migration - and offered little concessions to the
intransigent protesters. Even though relatively few teachers and
nurses actively took part in the protests, a considerable share of the
population supported their activities and regarded government
responses as unsatisfactory. In this atmosphere, the SaS and OLaNO
parties repeatedly stressed they would not consider a coalition
government with Smer after the elections. The former presented an
elaborate programme of economic liberalisation, while the latter
focused almost exclusively on the anti-corruption agenda, an image
reinforced by the presence of publicly known anti-corruption activists
and whistleblowers on their party list. Sie
0
t and Most-Híd
were less clear on the issue of future cooperation with Smer and
focused on anti-corruption measures and general competence and
trustworthiness, respectively.
Slovak Nationalists refrained from their traditional antiminority
themes, and emphasised their novelty and newly found
moderation. SDKU, whose parliamentary caucus ceased to exist due
to the defection of its members to other parties, did not articulate
any distinctive themes. Their Christian Democratic (KDH) colleagues
waged a campaign that was rather unfocused: their
M. Rybar, P. Spac / Electoral Studies xxx (2016) 1e42
Please cite this article in press as: Rybar, M., Spac, P., The March 2016 parliamentary elections in Slovakia: A political earthquake, Electoral
Studies (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2016.10.010
traditional agenda, i.e. support for traditional (family) values, was
diluted by the presence of several high-profile pro-life activists on
the party lists of other opposition parties. Thus, KDH struggled to
take a clear stance on many pressing issues. Among the nonparliamentary
opposition parties, LSNS (Peoples Party Our
Slovakia), a radical right party, campaigned on an anti-immigration,
anti-EU and anti-establishment themes. Another protest party, We
Are Family, was founded just a few weeks before the elections by
controversial millionaire Boris Kollar. It campaigned on an antiestablishment
ticket, emphasizing its own newness and cleanness,
its anti-immigration stance, and it demanded measures aimed
at helping low-income people.
5. Results
Nearly 60 per cent of eligible voters participated in the election.
The turnout was very similar to the general elections in both 2010
and 2012 and stabilized around 60%. On the other hand, the results
of parties show a rising dynamics in the party system (Table 1). As
in three previous national elections, the leftist Smer-SD also won in
2016. However, the party suffered substantial losses as it obtained
merely less than 30 per cent of votes and lost the majority in
parliament with, only 49 seats. The final results thus confirmed the
trends suggested earlier by polls published in previous months
about the decline in support for Smer-SD. Compared to the 2012
general election, the party lost nearly 400 thousand votes.
The elections brought disastrous results for established opposition
centre-right parties: For the first time in their history, both
KDH and SDKU-DS remained out of parliament. While the Christian
Democrats did not pass the threshold by a hair, SDKU-DS which
had, even in 2010, held the position of the strongest rightist party in
Slovakia, gained less than one per cent of votes. The party Bridge
matched its results from the previous election, but still lost two
seats. The election was a disaster for the new party, Network, that
positioned itself as the leading opposition force against the party
Smer-SD, but ended with below six per cent of votes. Unlike these
parties, the election was a success for SaS and OLaNO-NOVA. Both
parties scored substantially better than in polls and increased their
parliamentary caucuses. Hence, the voters rewarded those centreright
parties that strictly excluded any cooperation with Smer-SD,
while they turned back to the others.
Alongside with Sie
0
t , two parties gained seats for the first time.
The new party, We are Family, led by entrepreneur Boris Kollar,
succeeded with its anti-establishment appeals and got more than 6
per cent of votes. A true surprise was the result of the extremist
LSNS. This party had been able to secure some electoral gains in
second tier elections, but until 2016 it was marginal in national
elections. Compared to the general election in 2012, it got five times
more voters and gained 14 MPs. Finally the nationalist SNS
confirmed the expectations from the polls and after four years
reclaimed its parliamentary status.
6. Government formation
With eight parties in parliament, most observers expected a
prolonged government formation process and perhaps even early
elections. A two-party cabinet by Smer and SNS, expected before
the elections as the most likely result, and apparently a solution
that Smer leader Robert Fico had in mind before the elections,
turned out to be unrealistic: the two parties did not control a majority
in the parliament. All parties ruled out extreme-right LSNS as
a coalition partner; in addition, We are Family announced it would
not enter any government but did not rule out its parliamentary
backing of a government without Smer-SD. A centre-right government
led by SaS leader Richard Sulík would require both the
participation of SNS and the support of We are Family. Under these
circumstances, SNS became a pivotal party. At first, its leader Andrej
Danko declared all options were open for his party. However, a
week after the elections, at a congress of his party, he ruled out
government cooperation with the We are Family and OLaNO
parties, thereby burying the prospect of a centre-right government.
Instead, he accepted invitation of Smer-SD to start coalition negotiations.
Most-Híd and Sie
0
t followed suit, citing the unfeasibility of
any alternative majority government.
Despite expectations of prolonged and difficult negotiations, the
policy priorities of the new government were agreed upon within
three days and the coalition talks were concluded within a week.
President Andrej Kiska appointed Prime Minister Robert Fico and
his new government on March 23, just 18 days after election day. In
a post-election poll, a majority of voters of Smer-SD and SNS were
satisfied with the new coalition government, while a majority of
Most-Híd's and Sie
0
t's supporters opposed it. The leaders of the two
junior coalition partners claimed the newly formed coalition government
was the only feasible option for the country, which was to
take the EU Council Presidency on July 1, 2016, and that all other
outcomes, including a caretaker government and early elections,
would only strengthen the extreme-right parties. To protest the
decision of their parties, three (out of ten) Sie
0
t parliamentarians
left the party and a Member of Parliament elected on the Most-Híd
ticket took the same step and left his party.
The new administration represents a departure from the pattern
of party competition and government formation in that it
Table 1
Results of the parliamentary elections in the Slovak Republic,5 March 2016.
Party Votes Votes (%) Change 2012 Seats Change 2012
Smer-SD (Direction-Social Democracy) 737,481 28.3 À16.1 49 À34
SaS (Freedom and Solidarity) 315,558 12.1 6.2 21 10
OLaNO (Ordinary People and Independent Personalities) 287,611 11.0 2.5 19 3
SNS (Slovak National Party) 225,386 8.6 4.1 15 15
LSNS (People's Party Our Slovakia) 209,779 8.0 6.5 14 14
We are Family 172,860 6.6 6.6 11 11
Most-Híd (Bridge) 169,593 6.5 À0.4 11 À2
Sie
0
t (Network) 146,205 5.6 5.6 10 10
KDH (Christian Democratic Movement) 128,908 4.9 À3.9 0 À16
SMK (Party of the Hungarian Community) 105,495 4.0 À0.2 0 0
Other parties 108,874 4.2 À4.6 0 0
Total 2,607,750 100 0 150 0
Parties not crossing threshold 343,277 13.1 À6.2
Turnout 59.8 0.7
Source: Slovak Statistical Office (2016).
M. Rybar, P. Spac / Electoral Studies xxx (2016) 1e4 3
Please cite this article in press as: Rybar, M., Spac, P., The March 2016 parliamentary elections in Slovakia: A political earthquake, Electoral
Studies (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2016.10.010
comprises parties from the two camps that have never cooperated
before. Most significantly, the party of traditional Slovak radical
nationalism (SNS) now governs with politicians representing the
largest ethnic minority (Most-Híd). This move has been facilitated
by moderating changes in the SNS, as well as by the fact that MostHíd
is, unlike its predecessor Party of Hungarian Coalition, not an
exclusive representative of the Hungarian minority but is
comprised of a significant share of ethnic Slovak politicians (and
voters). In addition, no Slovak government since 2002 has contained
parties with such divergent economic orientations: Smer-SD
and SNS have pursued paternalistic and redistributive policies
while Most-Híd and Sie
0
t have been more pro-market and liberal
formations. The new coalition government downplays its internal
divisions and claims it can provide stability in difficult international
political situations, innovative policies in fighting corruption, and
rejection of political extremism and radicalism.
7. Implications
The Slovak party political scene in 2016 sharply differs from its
recent form. As an illustration, none of the subjects of the fourparty
coalition government that had governed just ten years prior
to the elections is now represented in parliament. Sie
0
t, an erstwhile
hope of liberal voters, whose political leaders aspired for a leading
role in the centre-right, started to collapse on the eve of entering
the new government. Smer-SD, even though still the strongest
party, suffered serious electoral losses. Together with the defeat of
its leader Robert Fico in the 2014 presidential elections and the less
than impressive results in the 2014 European Parliament elections,
it calls into question its long-term ability to mobilise voters. The
centre-right opposition has transformed radically: instead of SDKU
and KDH, the moderate peoples' parties, it is now composed of
liberal eurosceptic SaS led by the controversial Member of European
parliament Sulík, and an amorphous OLANO-NOVA grouping,
itself a conglomerate of various political streams and individuals.
While SDKU is generally considered a dead party, Christian
Democrats may return to parliament after the next elections, as
they failed to gain parliamentary representation by only a tiny
margin. To their right, the parliamentary space is occupied by two
protest and radical-right parties that represent people disenchanted
with the current political and economic situation. One of
the main rationale for the creation of the new left-right government
was to prevent instability, arguably a fertile ground for the
growth of the radical parties. It remains to be seen how well the
new administration will deliver on their promises and how this will
impact the prospects of the opposition parties, both mainstream
and more radical.
Acknowledgements
The first author wishes to acknowledge that this work is a result
of a research project “Institutional Performance in the New Europe”
supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under
the contract No. APVV-0413-11.
References
Deegan-Krause, K., Haughton, T., 2012. The 2010 parliamentary elections in
Slovakia. Elect. Stud. 31 (1), 222e225.
Kopecek, L., 2007. Politicke strany na Slovensku 1989 az 2006 (Political Parties in
Slovakia between 1989 and 2006). CDK, Brno.
Misík, M., Plenta, P., 2014. Volebne programy politických stran vo volbach do NR SR
2012 (Party manifestos in the 2012 Slovak parliamentary elections). In:
Rybar, M. (Ed.), Politicka participacia na Slovensku v kontexte parlamentných
volieb 2012. Univerzita Komenskeho, Bratislava, pp. 71e113 (Political Participation
in the Context of the 2012 Parliamentary Elections in Slovakia).
Bratislava.
Rybar, M., Spac, P., Voda, P., 2014. Prezidentske volby na Slovensku v roku 2014
(Presidential Election in Slovakia in 2014). CDK, Brno.
Rybar, M., Spac, P., 2015. The March 2014 presidential elections in Slovakia: the
victory of a political Novice. Elect. Stud. 38, 88e90.
Spac, P., 2016. The role of ballot ranking: preferential voting in a nationwide constituency
in Slovakia. East Eur. Polit. Soc. 30 (3), 644e663.
Slovak Statistical Office, 2016. Available at: http://volby.statistics.sk/nrsr/nrsr2016/
en/index.html.
M. Rybar, P. Spac / Electoral Studies xxx (2016) 1e44
Please cite this article in press as: Rybar, M., Spac, P., The March 2016 parliamentary elections in Slovakia: A political earthquake, Electoral
Studies (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2016.10.010