SDS, LMŠ and DeSUS lose ground in Delo poll

Ljubljana – The ruling Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) continues to lead the field in the latest poll commissioned by the newspaper Delo, but has lost ground for the second month running. The LMŠ party of ex-PM Marjan Šarec and the DeSUS of the aspiring PM-designate Karl Erjavec have likewise slipped back amid growing voter discontent.

The SDS polled at 13.7%, down 3.2 percentage points from December, as the party leader, PM Janez Janša saw the biggest improvement in voter approval to climb two spots to 16th on the list of the most popular politicians.

The opposition Left climbed to second among parties, despite gaining just 0.2 points to 9.6%, as the Marjan Šarec List (LMŠ) lost 2.6 points to 7.5% to fall from second to fourth. The Social Democrats (SD) are in third having added 0.8 points to 8.5% after losing four points the month before.

The Pensioners’ Party (DeSUS), which quit the Janša government in December and whose leader Erjavec is now heading the bid for the cabinet’s replacement, lost 1.5 points to 2.1%.

Delo says the showing does not augur well for the planned vote of no-confidence, in particular as Erjavec too fell to the bottom of the popularity ranking of politicians.

The coalition New Slovenia (NSi) ranks fifth among parties at 4.8%, down 0.3 points, followed by the opposition Alenka Bratušek Party (SAB) on 3.1%, which is on a par with last month. The coalition Modern Centre Party (SMC) rank 13th at 1.1%.

A combined showing for the ruling parties is 21.7% including DeSUS or 19.6% excluding DeSUS, while the centre-left bloc has 30.8% with DeSUS and 28.7% without it.

However, 22.5% of those questioned were undecided, up from 18.7% in December, and a further 13.3% or 1.2 points more than a month ago would not vote for any of the parties on offer.

The voter approval rating for the government remains low with 53.1% assessing its job negatively, against 20.6% who assess it positively, and 24.9% who gave it an average mark for a combined score of 2.45 on the scale of one to five, compared to 2.44 a month ago.

President Borut Pahor continues as the most popular politician ahead of Infrastructure Minister Jernej Vrtovec and Labour Minister Janez Cigler Kralj, both of whom are members of the NSi.

The poll was conducted by Mediana among 709 respondents between 4 and 7 January.

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