Slovakia, January 25 - According to a survey carried out by the MVK Agency and published on Monday, the strongest coalition party Smer-SD would have gained 42 percent of the votes if a general election had taken place in January.

The poll, which was carried out on January 13-18 on a representative sample of 1,038 respondents, also indicated a big shake-up in support for other parties. The main opposition party SDKU-DS came second on 9.4 percent, but only just ahead of the non-parliamentary rightist party Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) on 9.2 percent, with the Christian Democrats (KDH) third on 8.9 percent.

The ethnic-Hungarian SMK would have gained 6.7 percent of the votes, followed by Most-Hid - a party uniting ethnic-Hungarian and Slovak voters - on 6.4 percent.

The list of parliamentary parties would have been completed by the Slovak National Party (SNS), which was supported by 6.4 percent of the respondents, and LS-HZDS on 5.4 percent.

According to the poll, Smer would have gained 67 percent of the seats in Parliament, with SDKU-DS and SaS both on 15 MPs, KDH with 14, SMK with 11, Most-Hid with ten, and SNS and LS-HZDS with nine each.

Around 11.8 percent of those questioned said that they definitely wouldn't have taken part in an election. Around 20 percent weren't sure whether they would have gone to the polls or weren't sure who to vote for.

(TASR, SLOVAKIA TODAY / ILLUSTRATION PHOTO)