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Slovenian Snap General Election
June 3, 2018
Slovenia will hold an early general election on June 3, President Borut Pahor announced in April, a month after center-left Prime Minister Miro Cerar resigned over a legal obstacle to a government investment project.
The decision to hold the election a week or two earlier than planned comes after the Supreme Court ordered a second referendum on whether the government should proceed with its 1-billion-euro railway project, a move that had led to Cerar’s resignation.
These will be the third snap elections in the history of Slovenia. Cerar was the second consecutive Prime Minister to resign.
Candidates are:
- Janez Jansa – long-time leader of the centre-right opposition and former Prime Minister.
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Marjan Sarec – comedian and political satirist before launching himself as an “anti-system” politician.
- Miro Cerar – the incumbent wants back in to win a stronger mandate this time, but his Modern Centre Party (SMC) has been lagging in the polls.
The 90 members of the National Assembly are elected by two methods; 88 are elected by open listproportional representation in eight 11-seat constituencies; seats are allocated to the parties at the constituency level using the Droop quota. The elected Deputies are identified by ranking all of a party’s candidates in a constituency by the percentage of votes they received in their district. The seats that remain unallocated are allocated to the parties at the national level using the d’Hondt method with an electoral threshold of 4%. Although the country is divided into 88 electoral districts, deputies are not elected from all 88 districts. More than one deputy is elected in some districts, which results in some districts not having an elected deputy; in the 2014 elections 21 of 88 electoral districts did not have an elected deputy.
Two additional deputies are elected by the Italian and Hungarian minorities by first-past-the-post voting.
Parties must have at least 35% of their lists from each gender, except in cases where there are only three candidates, in which case there must be at least one candidate of each gender.
Sources and Further Reading:
Slovenia to hold early election on June 3
Slovene Ex-Comedian’s Party Takes Lead in Poll Before Elections
Slovenia govt’ formally ends term after leader resigns
Slovenian Leader Quits After Court Blocks Key Rail Project
