Slovenia’s Jansa Set for Potential Defeat in Nail-Biter Vote

(Bloomberg) -- Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa is running neck-and-neck in opinion polls before Sunday's elections with an opposition party that has vowed to oust him from power and reverse policies they say undermine democracy and the rule of law.

Jansa, a close ally of European Union rebel Viktor Orban and pro-Russian Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, is in a too-close-to-call race against the upstart Freedom Movement led by Robert Golob, the former head of state-owned energy utility Gen-I.

Jansa's Slovenian Democratic Party, known as SDS, was leading with 22.1% in a voter survey from Ninamedia published Wednesday by the Dnevnik newspaper. That was 1.8 percentage points more than Freedom Movement's result.

If undecided voters were considered, Freedom Movement led SDS 26.3% to 25.5%. With neither party likely to secure an outright majority in parliament, both are expected to rush to try to convince smaller factions to join it in a ruling coalition, meaning that the winner may not actually lead the next government.

At the moment, Golob appears to have a slight advantage, with potential allies among left-leaning parties better placed to win seats in the chamber.

“With high turnout expected, the left option has an edge in Sunday's election,” said Andraz Zorko, political analyst and partner at Valicon. Left-wing parties have more untapped potential among voters, he added.

Crowded Parliament

That could shift according to the result, however: As many as six parties are near the threshold, setting the stage for a crowded parliament and a number of potential kingmaker parties that may dictate whether Jansa or Golob will become premier.

Opponents of Jansa, who served time in prison last decade for a corruption conviction that was later overturned, criticize him for mishandling the Covid-19 pandemic. They also say he has emulated his closest ally, Orban, by putting the squeeze on media freedoms and also for insulting opponents in coarsely worded Twitter posts.

For his part, Jansa boasts growing investment, record employment and economic growth of 8.1% last year. He also made one of the first visits to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy following Russia's Feb. 24 invasion, traveling with his Czech and Polish counterparts in a diplomatic move that he said put Slovenia “back on the world map.”

Jansa's SDS was blocked from forming a government after it won elections in 2018. But it capitalized on a tactical mistake by former Prime Minister Marjan Sarec, who dissolved his cabinet in 2020 to leverage his popularity to strengthen his position by calling early elections. But Jansa then wooed several of Sarec's coalition partners to join SDS him in his current government.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.