Freedom Movement Party wins election in Slovenia, defeating populist PM Janez Jansa

In the National Election held in Slovenia, the populist Prime Minister Janez Jansa lost to Freedom Movement. The Environmentalist Party, Freedom Movement gained a lot more votes than Jansa’s SDS party, the preliminary figures released by election authorities revealed.

Although Jansa had high hopes to win and be in charge of the fourth term in office, he conceded defeat. He however added that his SDS party had received more votes than they ever had. Jansa said while addressing his supporters that he accepted the results. He congratulated the winner.

As expected, the election was very close. But the official preliminary figures revealed that the Freedom Movement party which is a debutant in the election, led with 34.34% of the votes. This was higher than what was expected. The SDS gained 23.83% which was based on 98.20% of ballots that were counted.


As a result, the Freedom Movement, which campaigned for sustainable energy, the rule of law and open society, would gain 40 seats in the 90-seat parliament while the SDS would be gaining 28 seats.

Approximately 1.7 Million voters in the small Alpine country which is a member of NATO and the European Union cast their ballots, resulting in a 68% turnout, according to the election commission,

This is well above the average, the experts said.

According to Peter Merse, who is a political analyst, the biggest winner is the Freedom Movement. He said that Slovenia is again open to experimenting with new faces and these are the faces that people have heard names of before.

Freedom Movement is led by Robert Golob who is a former executive of the state-owned energy company that launched green energy projects. Freedom Movement was formed last year.