Earlier this week, the Institute for Public Affairs organized mock European elections at 62 high schools around Slovakia, with a surprising result.
The non-parliamentary “Peoples’ Party Our Slovakia”, which is connected to the extreme far-right ideology and to the controversial governor of Banská Bystrica region Marián Kotleba, would get to send three MPs to the European Parliament – just like the most popular and currently governing Social Democratic SMER. Out of 13,498 eligible voters, 6,175 cast votes. While this is not a representative poll, it is a good insight into the youth perception of politics today. Miroslav Kollár from the Institute comments on these results:
“Students could also cast preferential votes, and these reveal that the trademark Kotleba is very visible in Slovak public discourse. Even it was not Marian Kotleba running for the European elections, but a person with a similar surname, he got the most preferential votes. I was also surprised that the high school students still acknowledge the name of Jozef Golonka, a former ice-hockey player, thanks to whom the students would send the non-parliamentary Slovak national party to the EU parliament.”
The results are fairly different from the latest public opinion poll conducted by MVK, in which the governing SMER Social Democracy would get six seats and none of the non-parliamentary parties would get in.
