Poll: PS Election Winner in January, Followed by Smer-SD

Bratislava, 29 January (TASR) - If a general election had been held in January, it would have been won by the opposition Progressive Slovakia (PS) party on 22.2 percent of the votes, followed by the senior governing Smer-SD (17.5 percent), according to a recent poll carried out by the Social Research Centre, which is part of the Statistics Office's subsidiary Infostat. The third-largest support would have gone to the extra-parliamentary far-right Republic party on 11.6 percent of the votes. Also making it to Parliament would have been the junior governing Voice-SD (9.9 percent), the Christian Democrats (KDH - 8.8 percent), Freedom and Solidarity (SaS - 6.2 percent) and the opposition 'Slovakia' party (5.2 percent). Meanwhile, the parties failing to make it past the 5-percent election threshold would have included the extra-parliamentary Democrats (4.1 percent), Hungarian Alliance (3.5 percent), the junior governing Slovak National Party (SNS - 2.7 percent) and 'We are Family' (2.1 percent). The poll was carried out on a sample of 1,085 respondents between January 12-16. jrg