Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob casts his vote in Ljubljana, 22 March 2026. Photo: EPA/ANTONIO BAT.
Prime Minister Robert Golob’s liberal Freedom Movement of incumbent won Sunday’s parliamentary election in Slovenia by a narrow margin over right-wing populist Janez Jansa’s opposition Slovenian Democratic Party, SDS, according to preliminary results announced by the election commission after 99.85 per cent of the ballots had been counted.
Golob’s Freedom Movement won 28.6 per cent of the vote and is expected to secure 29 seats in the new 90-member parliament, while Jansa’s SDS won 27.9 per cent and is projected to take 28 seats. Neither party came close to the 46 seats needed for a majority. Turnout was about 69.3 per cent.
In third place was the Christian Democratic alliance of New Slovenia, the Slovenian People’s Party, and Focus, with nine seats. The Social Democrats won six seats, the same number as Anze Logar’s Democrats.
The anti-vaccine Resni.ca party is projected to win five seats, as is the left-wing alliance of Levica and Vesna, according to the Slovenian Press Agency, STA. Two additional seats in parliament are reserved for representatives of Slovenia’s Hungarian and Italian minorities.
A fragmented parliament will require coalition negotiations. The current governing coalition consists of the Freedom Movement, the Social Democrats, and Levica. But based on the preiminary results, Golob’s party no longer holds a parliamentary majority and will need broader support to form a new government.
The Freedom Movement nevertheless declared victory aftre a fierce campaign marked by scandal, including reports linking Jansa, three-times former prime minister, to figures associated with the Israeli private intelligence firm Black Cube.
“It was tense, but above all, thank you to all the voters who came out to vote. You voted for democracy, not just for freedom,” Golob said in a speech late Sunday.
“In the next term, we will do everything to make that future better for all citizens,” he added. Reuters and AP news agencies both reported Golob signalling that he would try to build a governing coalition despite the difficult arithmetic involved.
Opposition leader Jansa said that such a divided parliament would clearly produce an unstable government in the country of 2.1 million people.
He argued that new elections should be held as soon as possible because the country needs a stable administration.
“You’ve probably been waiting at a gas station for the last few days; you know what is happening and what is going to happen,” he added, referring to the Middle East conflict’s impact on global energy supplies.