The government of Robert Golob is facing a dramatic drop in support. After a year and a half of the Robert Golob government, the country is facing many challenges – for example, the failing healthcare service, with promised reforms being pushed far into the future. Reconstruction after the floods has stalled. The testimonies of former Minister of the Interior Tatjana Bobnar and former Acting Director-General of the Police Boštjan Lindav in the National Assembly were also quite a hit for the government. The only success that the government has managed to record to date is the establishment of a one-party rule in public broadcasting and other institutions. The current terrible results are thus quite logical. Only 2.8 percent of people still rate the government’s performance as “very positive”. As they wrote in the Delo newspaper, in which the latest public opinion poll was published, “no one has ever experienced such a fall in support.” Meanwhile, the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS) currently enjoys the highest level of trust among voters.
When asked by Mediana pollsters, “which party would you vote for” if the elections were held tomorrow, 22.2 percent of voters said they would vote for the SDS party. The second-placed Freedom Movement (Gibanje Svoboda) would receive only 14.4 percent of the vote. The Freedom Movement party is facing a severe negative trend, which suggests that it will suffer the same fate as all the other new-face instant parties before it. Back in September, they had the support of 24.3 percent of the electorate, in October, they had the support of 18.8 percent of the electorate, and today, as already mentioned, the number has dropped to 14.4 percent. In three months, they have lost almost 10 percentage points.
For the Social Democrats (Socialni demokrati – SD), the level of voter support has not changed. This time they recorded 7 percent support, and in October and September, they would have won the votes of 6.7 percent of the electorate. Meanwhile, electoral support for the New Slovenia party (Nova Slovenija – NSi) is declining. After a jump to 7.2 percent support in October, they recorded only 4.7 percent support this time. They lost more than a third of their support. The only party that is worse off than the Christian democrats is the Left party (Levica), which has reached 4 percent support this time. They have fallen by 1.1 percentage points compared to the October measure of voter support. The share of those who would not vote for any party is increasing, and it is currently at 23.6 percent.
Voters do not trust the government, much less the Prime Minister
55 percent of voters would give the government a negative rating. Meanwhile, in October, 42.2 percent of voters gave them a “negative” rating. When asked how they rate the government’s performance, 26.6 percent of respondents answered that they would rate it as “medium”. Only another 15.6 percent would rate the government’s performance as good, and only 2.8 percent as positive.
The Prime Minister himself is facing a particularly severe drop in support, with him being less popular by a wide margin than his own ministers. Namely, he has experienced the biggest drop in support compared to the September measurement. He slipped from sixth place to the penultimate place on the list of popular politicians. The only one less popular is the former mayor of Tržič, Borut Sajovic, leader of the Freedom Movement party’s parliamentary group. Minister of Defence Marjan Šarec’s popularity has also fallen sharply. After the floods in August, he experienced a surge in voter support, but lost it after the latest affair. A military reality show, on which the Ministry of Defence was set to spend 2 million euros, pushed Šarec from eighth place to thirteenth. The most popular are the President of the country, Nataša Pirc Musar, and SDS MP and former minister Anže Logar.
What kind of public support would the SDS party have received without the hateful media?
Editor and political analyst Peter Jančič comments on the results of the opinion poll, writing: “Janša leads by far the most popular SDS party, as measured by several media outlets, and at least part of the negative ratings in his case are the result of the harsh and sometimes very dirty propaganda against him as a big player that has been spread from rival parties on the left and right for decades. What is new, however, is that Golob is suddenly in a similar position.”
Janez Janša commented on the announcement of the government’s collapse by saying that the only democratic way to resolve the situation is to hold elections to the National Assembly as soon as possible and then form a strong and operational government, which will be able to face internal and external challenges and will be independent of unelected centres of power. For the time being, the SDS party is the only one that has a team, gathered around the recently appointed SDS Strategic Council, which is capable of successfully assuming responsibility tomorrow without a lengthy induction.
Ž. K.
