The nearly 6,000 polling stations in Slovakia closed their doors this Saturday at 22:00 local time, after a day that began at 07:00 local time to elect the successor of liberal lawyer Zuzana Caputova at the head of the state.
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With 92.89% of the votes counted, the Social Democrat Peter Pellegrini won the election with 55.02%, or 1,276.413 votes. On second place Ivan Korčok with the 44,97 % of the votes. Participation was 60%, 18 points more than in 2019.
Opinion polls indicated a close fight between Peter Pellegrini, current president of the parliament, and former Foreign Minister and diplomat Ivan Korcok. The office of President has a broadly representative role in Slovakia, which is a member of both the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Slovak presidents do not have many executive powers, but they can veto laws or challenge them before the constitutional court. They appoint judges of the constitutional court, who may become important in the political struggle over the fate of Prime Minister Robert Fico’s reforms, which would dramatically alleviate punishment for corruption.
Korcok surprisingly led the first round of voting on 23 March with a 5.5 percentage point advantage over Pellegrini. The contest reached a second round because no candidate managed to obtain an absolute majority of the votes cast.
At the moment, there are indications of a high turnout, which could be ten points higher than five years ago, when Caputova defeated the Social Democratic politician and European Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič.