Bratislava: Incumbent leftist Prime Minsiter Robert Fico won Slovakia's Saturday general election, but lost his comfortable parliamentary majority on the back of a strident anti-refugee platform.
An exit poll by the private Markiza TV station showed his Smer-Social Democrats (Smer-SD) party taking 27.3 percent of the vote followed by the liberal Freedom and Solidarity SaS with 13.3 percent and conservative OLANO-NOVA which took 11.2 percent.
At least seven other parties entered parliament according to the poll, including the far-right Slovak National Party (SNS) with eight percent, touted by analysts as a possible Fico coalition partner.
It's "a big mishmash and a huge number of political parties in parliament", Fico told reporters as he arrived at his Smer-SD party headquarters minutes ahead of the end of voting.
The extreme right nationalist LS-Nase Slovensko (Our Slovakia) led by Marian Kotleba also made it into the 150-seat parliament with 6.8 percent, according to the Markiza poll.
Two other parties, Most-Hid (Bridge) representing the ethnic Hungarian minority took 7.30 percent support, while the liberal Siet (The Net) party made its debut in parliament with 6.7 percent.
Fico's strongly anti-refugee policies echo those of other hardliners in the EU's poorer ex-communist east, including Czech President Milos Zeman, Hungarian Premier Viktor Orban and Poland's Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
All have shunned refugees as Europe grapples with its worst migration and humanitarian crisis since World War II.
AFP
