A general election was held in Slovakia on 12 June. Previously, the government was a coalition led by the centre-left Smer-Social Democracy party and that also included representatives of People’s Party – Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (ĽS-HZDS) and the Slovak National Party (SNS).

The results are somewhat paradoxical. (They are available here). Smer gained 12 seats in the 150-seat legislature, taking its total to 62 seats. So, it is by far the largest party in parliament. However, because of the 5% electoral threshold, ĽS-HZDS lost all of its 15 seats. In addition, the SNS only just managed to cross the 5% threshold, losing 11 seats and returning only 9 deputies. For its part, the largest centre-right party remains the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union – Democratic Party (SDKÚ-DS), but it lost three seats and now has 28 seats. By contrast, a new party, Freedom and Solidarity (Sloboda a Solidarita – SaS), a liberal party, came from nowhere and won 22 seats.

So, the bottom line is that the incumbent government can only rely on 71 seats in the legislature, which is not enough for a majority. The current opposition could cobble together 79 seats, but this would be a slim majority and open to defection and would be a four-party coalition.

There are good reports at the Slovak Spectator. There is a lot of information on Slovakian parties and elections at pozorblog. This is perhaps the best place to follow the inevitable coalition wrangling.