Why our barometer is not an opinion poll

This site's barometer shows, from the answers of people who take the test, how many have responded, the average position on the political compass in each of Slovakia's eight regions, how the party with the highest match is distributed and the issues on which answers are most divided. Once there are thousands of tests, it will be tempting to read it as a poll. It is not, and it is worth explaining exactly why.

What the barometer shows

The barometer has four parts, and the data are updated daily:

• Participation: the number of completed tests, how many of them in the last 30 days, and how many regions already have publishable data.
• Territory: the average position on the compass (economic axis from −100 on the left to +100 on the right; social axis from −100 progressive to +100 conservative) in each of the eight self-governing regions. The compass does not count statements on topics that belong to neither of its axes, such as Ukraine, the EU, defence or minorities.
• Party with the highest match: the share of completed tests in which each party had the highest match.
• Polarisation: an index from 0 (everyone answers the same) to 100 (answers are split as far as possible between the two extremes) for each topic. It is calculated from all answers to the test's current questions, including those from unfinished tests.

Once a month we publish a reading of the barometer in the Analysis section. Media, consultancies and universities can order more detailed data reports by territory, age and topic; the same rules apply to them as to the barometer.

The difference lies in how respondents are chosen

A serious poll starts from a sampling design. The agency decides how many people to ask, and with what spread by sex, age, education or region, so that the result can be generalised. It contacts those people and, if the final spread does not match the population, weights the answers to correct it. That work makes it possible to say "40% of voters think X" with a calculable margin of error. For example, the NMS agency's voting model for October 2026 is based on 1,005 respondents and gives a confidence interval for each party: for the party with the highest score (19.5%), from 16.3% to 22.7%. The Focus agency's September 2026 poll had 1,012 respondents, interviewed face to face and online.

Slovak law recognises this difference. Under § 17(1) of the Election Campaign Act, an election poll ("volebný prieskum") is a survey of voting preferences carried out "on the basis of generally accepted statistical methods on a representative sample of voters", in which voters are represented in proportion mainly by sex, age, education or place of permanent residence. Under § 17(2), any other survey of voting preferences is an election survey ("volebná anketa").

None of that happens with the barometer. The people in these data came on their own: they searched for a political test, clicked a link on social media or were sent one by someone. Nobody was selected. There are no quotas and no weighting, and there is no margin of error to calculate, because a margin of error assumes random sampling that does not exist here.

This group can be expected not to resemble the electorate: it will probably be younger, more urban and more interested in politics than average. The test is also open to anyone, including people who cannot vote in National Council elections: only citizens of the Slovak Republic who are 18 by election day vote in them. That is selection bias, and more answers do not fix it. A million voluntary answers are still a million voluntary answers.

So what is it good for?

For describing that group, which is no small thing. If most respondents agree with a statement, or if an issue splits their answers sharply, that says something real about the people who take the test. What it does not allow is a leap to "Slovaks think".

It is also useful for comparison, with care. Differences between regions within the same self-selected group are informative, even though the absolute level cannot be generalised and the bias need not be the same everywhere.

Nor is the distribution of the party with the highest match a voting preference. It says which party the test answers were closest to, not whom those people will vote for. That is why on the barometer it always comes with a warning that it does not show voting preferences.

How we protect respondents

The test does not ask for a name or an email address, and it does not require registration. Each result is stored with a random identifier. It optionally asks for your age group, your sex and which party you would vote for: none of these appears in the link for sharing your result, and the party you would vote for is never published as a survey of voting preferences; it only serves to show you where you agree with it. Your region is not asked: it is estimated roughly from your connection, using a geolocation database installed on our own server.

Aggregates are subject to a minimum threshold: no cell is published unless it contains at least 100 tests. That is why, while there are few tests, the barometer will be almost empty, and a region that does not reach the minimum will not appear in the table. It is not that the data are missing: with few cases, an aggregate starts to say too much about specific people.

We never publish individual data or combine aggregates in a way that would allow anyone's profile to be reconstructed. The details are in the privacy policy.

What about the days before the vote?

Slovakia has a pre-election silence for polls. Under § 17(3) of the Election Campaign Act, publishing the results of election polls and of election surveys is prohibited "48 hours before election day and on election day until voting ends". The ban does not only apply to newspapers and television: a company that breaks it is fined €100,000 by the Ministry of the Interior (§ 19(10)).

The barometer does not publish voting intentions or estimate election results. The distribution of the party with the highest match could, however, be read as data on voting preferences, and therefore as an election survey. That is why the whole barometer is switched off during the silence period: the election is held on a Saturday, so from 00:00 on Thursday until the end of election day (voting ends at 22:00). The other places where we publish aggregated data from answers are switched off as well. Nothing is deleted; the data return after election day. We will add the exact dates once the election has been called.

The test itself stays open during the silence period. Your individual result is neither a poll nor a survey: it only shows you how far you are from each party.

How to cite it

If you use these data, the correct way to describe them is as aggregates from a self-selected sample of users of a political affinity test, stating the period, the number of tests and the warning that the sample is not representative. The barometer carries a methodology note with all of these elements.

We ask that they not be presented as an opinion poll or as an estimate of the election result, because they are neither. And during the silence period, please do not publish them at all.