Slovakia opposition leading in preliminary election results
Exit polls had correctly predicted the party would get about 25% of the vote.
Slovakia’s conservative opposition has a comfortable lead in the country’s election, according to preliminary results.
The Ordinary People party had 24.8% or 52 seats in the 150-seat parliament, with votes from about 75% of the almost 6,000 polling stations counted by the Statistics Office.
The senior ruling leftist Smer-Social Democracy party led by former populist prime minister Robert Fico was in second place with 18.9% of the vote.
The result means Ordinary People would be able to create a majority government with three other centre-right parties and unseat Smer, the country’s long-dominant but scandal-tainted party.
In a further blow for Smer, preliminary results suggest Mr Fico’s current coalition partners, the ultra-nationalist Slovak National Party and a party of ethnic Hungarians, will not win any seats.
Slovakia’s local ally of France’s far-right National Rally party, the conservative populist group We Are Family, had captured 8.4% of the vote.
It was running neck and neck with an extreme far-right party whose members use Nazi salutes and which wants Slovakia out of the European Union and NATO.
