The old and the “new”: Slovenia’s parliamentary elections

Ahead of the election in Slovenia on Sunday 22 March 2026, Tim Haughton and Alenka Krašovec explain the Slovenian political landscape and where the different parties stand in the polls.

Politics is a mix of the perennial and the new. Slovenians go to the polls on Sunday in parliamentary elections in which the country’s perennial political figure Janez Janša, the former three-time prime minister, is leading the race against the incumbent Robert Golob and his left-liberal coalition.

A prominent figure since Slovenia’s independence in 1991 Janša is Slovenia’s marmite politician. His supporters point to his experience, delivery on promises and leadership qualities that helped navigate the country through rocky waters. But his opponents have highlighted corruption scandals, his close association with politicians such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and have accused Janša of overseeing democratic backsliding in Slovenia during his last stint in power (from 2020 to 2022).

Janša’s right-wing Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) looks set to win a quarter of the vote. SDS’s pitch to the electorate blends the personality and record of Janša with promises to cut taxes. There is also a nationalist/identity tint to its campaign with posters imploring voters to back SDS if they want their grandchildren to be able to sing Slovene songs. With the continued presence of the divisive figure of Janša as the party’s leader, such messages do not tend to convert many voters to SDS, but they help mobilise the party’s core.

In 2022, Janša lost power to the Freedom Movement whose leader Robert Golob served as prime minister at the helm of a three-party coalition. At the heart of Freedom Movement’s success was a bandwagon effect: anti-Janša voters saw Golob’s party as the best vehicle to defeat Janša.

Four years on, Freedom Movement is on course to win a fifth of the vote (down from the 35% it won in 2022) and become the second largest party in parliament although the difference between the two parties has been decreasing in the last fortnight. That may seem a normal outcome for a party that has been in government for the past few years, but it marks a distinct change in Slovenia’s politics.

In each of the last four parliamentary elections a large slice of the anti-Janša vote has been swept up by a new party. But by the time of the subsequent election, support for that new party has witnessed steep drops in support with many of those votes captured by a newer party in what we have dubbed a new party subsystem.

Freedom Movement’s ability to hang onto a large slice of its voters is striking in light of the series of challenges faced by Golob’s government linked to energy shocks, war in Ukraine and devastating floods in 2023. But under his watch, whilst the country’s economic performance has not been spectacular, Slovenia has experienced growth, a reduction in inflation and very low levels of unemployment. Golob has called for Slovenia to continue along the path of stability and reforms in key public services like health encapsulated in Freedom Movement’s rallying call to its voters: ‘The work is not done yet: Freedom forward!’

Nonetheless, Slovenia has seen the emergence of new parties and plenty of churn in the past couple of years with several fissions, fusions and new creations. A few disgruntled SDS politicians abandoned Janša to form the Democrats of Anže Logar, and a politician elected on the Greens (Vesna) list for the European Parliament elections in 2024 jumped ship to create his own new party, Rebirth – the Party of Vladimir Prebilič. Both have promised to build bridges to end Slovenia’s polarised politics and suggest there is an alternative to Golob or Janša. Moreover, one of Golob’s coalition partners, the Left Party, formed an electoral alliance with the Greens (Vesna), and Janša’s traditional allies the centre-right New Slovenia forged an electoral alliance with the Peoples Party and a new party FOCUS.

Whilst none of these parties or new alliances has attracted enough support to challenge SDS or Freedom Movement as the likely leader of any government after Sunday’s election, the relative success of these parties and the functioning of the 4% electoral threshold will do much to determine what kind of government is created and how fragile its majority might be in Slovenia’s 90 seat parliament. Many politicians have been unequivocal in their statements about whether they are willing to jump into a coalition bed with Janša or Golob, but the absence or presence of other smaller parties in a potential coalition might be just as decisive.

Current polls indicate seven parties or electoral alliances will cross the threshold including resni.ca established in 2020 as an anti-vaxxer party that continues to pump out populist messages. But given the lack of strong partisan ties among large swathes of the electorate we should not be surprised by the melting away of support or a sudden boost in the last few days of the campaign. Even Freedom Movement’s support may be vulnerable, not least due to videos circulating on social media allegedly exposing political influence, graft and dodgy deals involving several figures seen to be close to the party leader. Moreover, Slovenia is not immune from claims about alleged foreign influence in its elections.

European themes have rarely played a central role in the politics of Slovenia and they are not prominent in the current campaign. Although Janša has had good relations with Orbán and has expressed views close to the Hungarian premier in areas such as migration, media freedom and the rule of law, SDS remains part of the European People’s Party, and Janša rarely rocks the boat in Brussels. Indeed, Slovene politicians of different hues recognise the economic and political benefits of being part of the EU and are rarely awkward partners at the European level.

Unlike in some other Central European states like Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, the war in Ukraine and relations with Russia are not a major dividing line in domestic politics. All major parties are supportive of Ukraine. On the other hand, Gaza and the new war with Iran are more frequently discussed and have consequences for the politics and economics of Slovenia.

But the most decisive factor for voters looks set to remain the perennial question of whether to entrust Janša with the premiership or not.

By Tim Haughton, Professor of Comparative and European Politics and Deputy Director of the Centre for Elections Democracy Accountability and Representation, University of Birmingham and Alenka Krašovec, Professor of Political Science, University of Ljubljana.