Slovakia regional elections: winners and losers in the regions

An opposition coalition and independent candidates won in most of Slovakia’s regional capitals. Progressive Slovakia, Igor Matovič’s Slovakia, and the governing Smer and Hlas each got one governor. The parties held their ground, but almost nobody is claiming new successes. Mikuláš Hanes, a political analyst at the NMS agency, analyzed the results for Seznam Zprávy.

Who won, who lost

It is hard to find a single winner, Hanes says. He counts the governing coalition and Progressive Slovakia among the losers: if they hoped for something more than defending past results, they did not get it. Smer lost Bardejov, Námestovo, Veľký Krtíš and Zvolen, while Hlas lost Považská Bystrica and Myjava. The coalition held on in the big cities but lost ground in the small ones.

The analyst names KDH leader Milan Majerský as a winner, after he beat Milan Mazurek in the race for governor of Prešov. According to Hanes, the KDH is one of the few parties that survived years outside parliament and can still win a governorship.

Mazurek lost, but won

Most attention went to the Prešov region. Milan Mazurek received more than 100,000 votes, against 30,000 in the previous election. Hanes believes that although Mazurek did not become governor, he can be considered one of the winners: the result far exceeded expectations and confirmed growing support for the Republika party. Republika’s candidate in Banská Bystrica, Miroslav Suja, did not manage the same.

The analyst stresses that the Republika label alone is not enough to win: a candidate must be widely known and attract voters regardless of Smer’s support. Mazurek has long worked in the Prešov self-governing region and already ran in the election four years ago. Other figures in the movement cannot yet repeat that scenario.

In the Nitra region, Smer, Hlas, the SNS and Republika formed an open coalition behind Branislav Becík of Hlas. In May, Hlas rejected a regional coalition with Republika; in August it agreed. According to Hanes, the barriers have fallen: without Republika’s support, the results of Becík and of MP Igor Šimek in the Košice region would have been lower.

Bratislava and voter mobilization

Smer tried to win Bratislava, but the result of Jozef Raž was not a disappointment, in the analyst’s view: his candidacy was more a gesture aimed at future elections. Incumbent mayor Matúš Vallo, Hanes says, will not be under threat as long as he wants to be re-elected and stays out of scandal. Bratislava remains center-right and liberal.

The agency’s pre-election poll said the outcome would be decided by 650,000 undecided voters. In the analyst’s opinion, Vallo mobilized them most successfully, and Majerský did so in part. Hanes described turnout as average and stable.

Weak spots of the opposition and the coalition

Opposition candidates failed to gather enough votes in Banská Bystrica and the Košice region, for example, and in Bratislava the parties did not agree on joint candidates for the city councils. Hanes notes that both the opposition and the coalition struggle to field respected people from their own ranks or to attract strong regional figures. Apart from long-familiar faces defending their posts, it was mainly independents who succeeded. Where the opposition did not unite and faced a strong coalition candidate or a local authority, it had no chance.

For the governing parties, the analyst says, this is a warning sign: without a new program or new faces, voters may not turn up at all in the parliamentary elections or may look for an alternative.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz