Election Resources on the Internet: Presidential and Legislative Elections in Slovakia, Part I

The Slovak Republic will hold an early parliamentary election on March 10, 2012. An overview of the Slovak electoral system is presented here; Slovakia's party system will be reviewed in Part II of this presentation.

Nationwide and (for 2004 to 2010) regional-level results are available here for the following presidential and legislative elections:

June 12, 2010		National Council

March 21-April 4, 2009	President

June 17, 2006		National Council

April 3-17, 2004	President

September 20-21, 2002		National Council

May 15-29, 1999	President

September 25-26, 1998		National Council

September 30-October 1^st, 1994		National Council

The legislature of the Slovak Republic, the National Council, is composed of 150 members directly elected by universal adult suffrage for a four-year term of office. National Council seats are filled by proportional representation (PR) in a single, nationwide electoral constituency, where political parties or coalitions of two or more parties submit lists of candidates. Voters may indicate preferences for up to four candidates in one list.

National Council seats are distributed on a nationwide basis by the Hagenbach-Bischoff method. However, in order to participate in the distribution of National Council seats, a party must obtain at least five percent of the vote, while coalitions of two to three parties and four or more parties are required to obtain at least seven and ten percent of the vote, respectively. An electoral quota - the republic electoral number - is calculated by dividing the total number of valid votes polled by qualifying lists by 151 - the number of National Council seats plus one. The number of votes won by each qualifying list is then divided by the electoral quota, and the result of this division, disregarding fractions, is the initial number of seats obtained by each list. Any seats that remain unallocated after the application of the electoral quota are distributed according to the largest remainder method.

List seats are allocated first to candidates whose preferential votes constitute at least three percent of the total number of votes cast for the list; however, if there are more qualifying candidates than available list seats, these are allocated to the candidates with the largest number of preferential votes. If the number of preferential votes is the same, seats are allocated to candidates in the order in which they appear on the list.

The president of the Slovak Republic is directly elected by universal suffrage in two stages of voting. In order to secure a place on the ballot, presidential candidates must be nominated by fifteen members of the National Council, or by a petition signed by 15,000 citizens. If no candidate obtains an absolute majority of all valid votes cast in the first round, then the top two candidates qualify for a runoff election, in which the candidate with the largest number of votes is elected to office for a term of five years.

Originally, the National Council chose the president, but a 1999 amendment to the constitution established the popular election of the president by runoff voting. Popular voting for presidential elections was adopted following a prolonged impasse in 1998, in which the National Council repeatedly tried to elect a new president, but no candidate attained the three-fifths majority required by the constitution.