Preliminary results from Saturday's parliamentary election show Slovakia's opposition with a comfortable lead.
With the votes from about 75% of the almost 6,000 polling stations counted by the Statistics Office early Sunday, the conservative Ordinary People group was capturing 24.8% of the vote or 52 seats in the 150-seat Parliament.
The senior ruling leftist Smer-Social Democracy party led by former populist Prime Minister Robert Fico was in second with 18.9% of the vote.
Leader of the Ordinary People and Independent Personalities party Igor Matovic poses with his supporters after acknowledging preliminary results of the general election in Trnava, Slovakia, Sunday, March 1, 2020. (AP PhotoPetr David Josek)
Smer has won big in every election since 2006. If the results hold, they would represent a drop in support from the 2016 election when Smer took 28.3% of the vote.
In what would be a further blow for Smer, its two current coalition partners, the ultra-nationalist Slovak National Party and a party of ethnic Hungarians looked like they wouldn't win any seats.
Slovakia's local ally of France's far-right National Rally party led by Marine Le Pen, a conservative populist group We Are Family was capturing 8.4% of the vote.
Leader of the Ordinary People and Independent Personalities party Igor Matovic strikes a V-sign after acknowledging preliminary results of the general election in Trnava, Slovakia, Sunday, March 1, 2020. (AP PhotoPetr David Josek)
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.
The pro-business Freedom and Solidarity party was getting 5.6% of the vote, while a new party established by former President Andrej Kiska, For People, was getting 5.4%.
Leader of the Ordinary People and Independent Personalities party Igor Matovic addresses his supporters, acknowledging preliminary results of the general election in Trnava, Slovakia, Sunday, March 1, 2020. (AP PhotoPetr David Josek)
Slovak Deputy Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini talks to journalists as he arrives at the Smer-SD party headquarters after the general elections in Bratislava, Slovakia, Saturday, Feb. 29, 2020. Two exit polls showed late Saturday that Slovakia's opposition appears to be winning parliamentary elections widely expected to unseat the long-dominant but scandal-tainted leftist party that governed on an anti-immigration platform. (Vaclav SalekCTK via AP)