What Slovak election polls show: four pollsters, October 2026

Four Slovak pollsters published party support figures in October 2026: NMS, Ipsos, Focus and AKO. As of 4 November no November poll had come out. Each firm measures differently, so their numbers cannot simply be merged into one "correct" result. Here they are side by side, with a description of what they do and do not allow you to conclude. The result of our test does not depend on polls, and nothing here is advice on how to vote.

In brief:

• PS comes first in all four polls (17.4–19.5%) and Smer second (16.6–18.4%). The gap between them ranges from 0.2 to 2.5 points and stays within the margin of error in every poll.
• Republika is third everywhere, but it has the widest spread of any party: from 10.4% to 14.2%.
• Eight parties clear 5% in three polls out of four. Demokrati are just below the line in NMS (4.9%) and above it elsewhere (5.1–5.8%).
• No pollster gives 76 seats either to today's coalition (44–46 seats) or to PS, SaS, KDH and Demokrati combined (62–71).
• In the two polls that report it, the "don't know" group is as large as or larger than the leading party's voters.

Four polls side by side

Columns run in order of fieldwork, oldest first. Figures are percentages as each firm published them.

Rows are sorted by the plain average of the four numbers, which we use for ordering only. We do not publish that average as a result, because it would blend different methods.

Why these are not the same measurement

The same percentage does not mean the same thing in each poll. This table shows how the four differ.

Timing matters as well. Almost four weeks separate the start of the first poll from the end of the last. In between, on 14 October, parliament passed the 2027 budget, and the regional and municipal elections of 24 October fell during AKO's fieldwork. Whether those events moved anything cannot be told from these figures, since the firms polled on different days and in different ways.

PS and Smer: an order, but not a winner

The gap between first and second is 1.7 points in NMS, 0.4 in Focus, 0.2 in Ipsos and 2.5 in AKO. That sounds like a clear order, but it looks far less clear once sampling error is included.

NMS gives PS an interval of 16.3–22.7% and Smer 14.7–20.9%. Focus gives 14.7–20.1% and 14.3–19.7%. Both pairs overlap almost entirely. Ipsos says it outright: the difference "is not statistically significant", and its own simulation gives PS a 52% and Smer a 47% chance of winning an election held during fieldwork. The AKO article reports no interval. Calculating one ourselves with the simple formula for 668 answers gives about ±3 points for each party and about ±4.5 points for the gap between them, which is more than the 2.5 measured.

Any story about a party "rising" or "falling" by half a point should be read the same way. According to NMS, the margin is ±1.7 points for a party near 5% and ±3.3 points for a party above 20%.

Where the pollsters part ways

Republika shows the widest spread: 14.2% in NMS against 10.4–11.3% in the others. September looked similar (15.6% in NMS, 9.7–12.8% elsewhere), which points to a lasting difference between firms and not a one-month blip.

A second pattern tracks the way data are collected. In both September and October, Hlas and the SNS score lower in the two online-only polls (in October, Hlas 5.9% and 6.6%, the SNS 1.5% and 2.0%) than in the two that also use interviewers (Hlas 8.5% and 8.2%, the SNS 3.5% and 4.5%). Smer goes the other way in October: 17.8% and 18.4% online, 17.0% and 16.6% otherwise. We have no reliable explanation. All we know is that NMS itself describes its sample as representative of the online population, and that AKO finds high support for Smer (36%) and Hlas (16%) among people aged 66 and over, though in a small subsample. Which method is closer to the truth will only become clear on election day.

What changed since September

Changes in percentage points according to each firm. For NMS and AKO these are the changes they report themselves; for Ipsos and Focus, the difference between two published figures. AKO's September sample was twice as large (2,000).

The firms rarely agree on direction. Only the SNS moves the same way in all four (down), and KDH does so with one zero (up); both changes are smaller than the margin. Three pollsters have Republika falling and one has it rising. On Smer they split two against two. A single month is therefore not enough to establish a trend.

The 5% line: half a point and ten seats

A party below 5% gets nothing and its votes effectively go to the others. On these models, 14.8–19.4% of votes would end up unrepresented (our sum). Ipsos alone publishes chances of entering parliament: KDH 94%, Hlas 85%, Demokrati 56%, Hungarian Alliance 12%.

To show how much rests on this, we reran the polls through the legal procedure described in our article on how the 150 seats are divided, changing one party's figure at a time and leaving all the others alone.

When a party at the line gets in, most of the others lose one or two seats each; when it stays out, they gain one to three. One row can therefore change the whole arithmetic of parliament, even though the difference is often below what a poll can detect. These are illustrations and not forecasts.

Seats

The seat numbers below are those the firms published. Our own check from the percentages gives identical results for Ipsos and Focus and differs by one seat between two parties for NMS and AKO. The reason is rounding: rounded percentages are all we have to work with.

And some totals you can check yourself:

These rows are not future coalitions. The first is today's government; the others are simply our grouping for adding up, and the parties themselves rule out some combinations. The table supports one conclusion only: none of these rows reaches 76 seats alone.

Undecided voters

Models share out only those who chose a party. In the AKO poll 66.8% of respondents could name one, in Focus 73.5%. In AKO 19.1% said they did not know, and in Focus 12.8%.

Converted to all respondents, 19.1% for PS in AKO is about 12.8% of everyone asked, fewer than those who do not know. In Focus, 17.4% for PS also comes to about 12.8%, the same as the undecided. This is a rough calculation because pollsters weight their data, but it conveys the scale: the undecided group is as big as the strongest party, or bigger. Compared with September (14.6% in AKO, 14.7% in Focus) the share does not move uniformly: up in AKO, down in Focus.

How Volebný test uses polls

Polls decided one thing only: which parties are in the test. To qualify, a party must reach 2% in three of the four firms' most recent polls. We reran it with the October figures and the selection stays the same: all twelve parties meet it, the SNS in exactly three polls (it has 1.5% in NMS). Za ľudí does not reach 2% in any poll that reports it.

Polls have no effect on your match: only your answers and the parties' positions are compared. Our barometer is not a poll either and should not be read as one. By law, poll results may not be published in the 48 hours before election day; other dates are in our election guide.

When we will update this

NMS usually publishes in the first half of the month and the other firms mostly later. When the November polls appear, we will add them and log the change in the revision record in our methodology. Every figure here comes from a pollster's press release or from an article by its client; the links are in the list of sources.