Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Kálmán Petőcz: National Populism and Electoral Behaviour
Kálmán Petőcz SDL voters). Another similarity was that one ruling party - namely the KDH - refused to endorse Schuster unambiguously while another — namely SMK-MKP - openly supported him. Due to Vladimir Mečiar’s extremely negative image among ethnic Hungarians, it is quite safe to assume that a vast majority of them voted for Schuster. Very much like in the case of the 2009 presidential elections, this allowed us to establish, with a relatively high degree of precision, the structure of votes cast by Slovak (i.e. non-Hungarian) voters on the ethnically mixed territory. Table 6 Comparison of presidential elections in 1999 and 2009 - election results of candidates running for the national-socialist bloc (%) District (constituency) 2009 elections (Ivan Gašparovič) 1999 elections (Vladimír Mečiar) Total Slovak voters only Total Slovak voters only Senec 33.87 42.3 29.97 37.5 Dunajská Streda 5.01 31.3 3.10 19.4 Galanta 34.92 57.3 29.46 37.5 Šaľa 30.85 56.1 24.22 44.0 Komárno 12.94 43.1 8.23 27.4 Nové Zámky (constituency)46.56 65.6 29.48 52.6 Nitra 61.12 65.7 51.59 55.5 Štúrovo (constituency) 8.17 43.9 5.24 31.3 Levice 42.37 64.2 29.45 44.6 Veľký Krtíš 48.31 74.3 30.92 47.6 Lučenec 47.91 69.4 30.71 42.1 Rimavská Sobota 42.3 62.2 24.16 35.5 Revúca 56.83 77.9 29.54 42.8 Rožňava 40.89 66.0 24.14 38.9 Košice area 48.97 62.0 21.06 26.7 Trebišov 48.81 69.7 23.96 34.2 Michalovce 62.44 73.5 37.48 44.1 Slovakia total 55.53 61.5 42.81 47.4 Source: Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic; author 's own calculations. Table 6 relatively convincingly justifies several interesting conclusions. A candidate of the national-populist bloc in 1999, Vladimir Mečiar not only failed to win on the national level but even among Slovak voters; in fact, Nitra and Nové Zámky were the only two constituencies in southern Slovakia where Mr. Mečiar dominated among Slovak voters. A mere glimpse on the table reveals that the gap between election results of Vladimir 120
