The Ninamedia agency conducted the first survey ahead of the elections for the European Parliament. Those who will head the party election lists will decide the vote. Most of the votes are expected to be won by the consolidated right leaning political option, at the expense of the center-left political option, which is broken up into small pieces.

The Ninamedia agency presented the findings of the first of its five conducted surveys. All the surveys will be presented in the framework of the Alternative Europe project before the European election. 700 respondents took part in the survey. 30,1 percent replied that they would surely vote at the upcoming elections. 29,7 percent said they would probably vote, while a fifth of all those questioned said they would definitely not take part in the voting process.

Contrary to the parliamentary elections, at the European elections Slovenian voters will put great importance on who heads the party’s election lists. Almost 70 percent of the respondents said the name of the candidate that heads the list would help them in their decision. 22,6 percent said what mattered to them was the political party behind the list.

Where will the votes go?
Slovenia's parties have to present their candidate lists a month before the elections, which will be held on the 25th of May. The majority of voters are obviously waiting for that moment. Only 13,3 percent of those questioned already know who they are going to vote for. Ninamedia tried to find out which candidates are going to head party lists, however political parties haven't yet confirmed their lists. For example it is still not known whether current European Commissioner Janez Potočnik will head the Positive Slovenia (PS) list, if Tanja Fajon will head the Social Democrats (SD) list, or if Gregor Virant will head the Citizen's List election list. The above mentioned three were hypothetically mentioned in the survey.

PS still hasn't officially convinced commissioner Potočnik. But if does succeed in doing so, according to the survey, the biggest parliamentary party could count on winning the European election. The results say that with Potočnik the party would get 16,9 percent of the vote and two out of the eight Slovenian seats in the European Parliament. Two other candidates likely to win MEP seats are Milan Zver, who would be on the SDS party list (they would get 15,3 percent of the vote) and Lojze Peterle, who would head the joint SLS and NSi list (15,7 percent of the vote).

From the remaining MEP seats one would surely go to the SD party and Tanja Fajon (10,1 percent of the vote) and one would most likely go to the DeSUS Pensioner's Party, with the former Zares party member, Ivo Vajgl, on top of their list (8,4 percent of the vote).

The new and smaller parties with almost no chance at all
Among the remaining Slovenian center-left political parties the Citizen's List (DL) might have some chance. The party could be represented at the European elections by its most notable member Gregor Virant. All the other parties, including LDS, Zares, Solidarnost (Solidarity) and Združena levica (the United Left), will be able to convince no more than 5 percent of the voters.

The survey did present us with one strange fact as well. As much as 58,2 percent of the respondents boasted to have taken part in the last European election, although voter turnout then was only at 28,25 percent. The executive director at Ninamedia Nikola Damjanić explained that giving false statements about taking part in an election was a common thing among Slovenians. "People like to forget not taking part in an election," said Damjanić.