If elections were held this year, the winner would undeniably be Janša’s Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), whose support consistently remains above 30% while Židan’s Social Democrats (SD) and Cerar’s Modern Centre Party (SMC) are lagging behind by a large margin. If we combine the support for both SD and SMC, it is still lower than the support for SDS by 6.9 percentage points. Moreover, after a three-year term, the coalition government consisting of SMC, the Democratic Party of Pensioners of Slovenia (DeSUS), and SD is only supported by one fourth of Slovenian citizens while almost two thirds are convinced that Cerar’s government did not live up to expectations.
The biggest opposition party SDS maintains its high level of support (36.9% in May; 32.2% in June) and has a large lead over all the other parties. SD has kept its 2nd place though its support fell by 2.5 percentage points (16.3% in May; 13.8% in June). The 3rd place is once again held by SMC, which increased its support by 2.2 percentage points (9.3% in May; 11.5% in June). Janša’s SDS has an advantage of 18.4 percentage points over Židan’s SD, and 20.7 percentage points over Cerar’s SMC.
Political analyst Sebastjan Jeretič: “Such a low level of support for the government shows that the experiment with all the new faces headed by Miro Cerar has completely failed. After their magnificent victory and the support from every member of the regime media they had the chance to astonish the public and break the year-long trend of distrust in politics in general. The start of their term was mostly marked by catastrophic strategic communication, which did at some point shift to a more professional level. However, the problem of this government was not communication alone, it was their actual work, which showed that power had been granted to people who are unable to rule the country, both due to a lack of knowledge and due to their character. A big problem of SMC is their arrogance and the conviction that they are the only intelligent people in the country. Instead of using a proper dialogue to make up for their initial weakness – the absence of any kind of leadership experience – they were convinced of their own superiority and went into a kind of elitist isolation. In fact, the arrogance of the ministers and their incompetence with regards to dialogue and the coordination of differing views inside the profession and society is the highest in key areas. The domains of infrastructure, health, and economy are led by people who lack the ability to communicate and coordinate, which is essential for successful leadership. This is why the biggest embarrassments of this government can be found in these departments, which will probably lead to the end of this political experiment. There is a lot of time left until the next elections, and the favourable economic conditions are on the side of the government since a large portion of the public does not follow political developments and lives better, which will continue to give leaders within the campaign a chance to use their silver tongues, with help from the regime media, and perhaps convince a person here or there to give them another vote.”
