Korcok and Pellegrini Advance to Second Round, State Commission Confirms
Ivan Korcok has made it to the run-off round of the presidential election on 42.51 percent of the votes, along with Peter Pellegrini on 37.02 percent, the State Electoral Commission confirmed with the official results at a news conference on Sunday.
Bratislava, March 24 (TASR) - Ivan Korcok has made it to the run-off round of the presidential election on 42.51 percent of the votes, along with Peter Pellegrini on 37.02 percent, the State Electoral Commission confirmed with the official results at a news conference on Sunday.
Korcok garnered 958,393 votes in the first round and Pellegrini 834,718. Stefan Harabin failed to advance to round two on 11.73 percent (264,579 votes), as did Krisztian Forro (2.9 percent - 65,588 votes), Igor Matovic (2.18 percent - 49,201 votes) and Jan Kubis (2.03 percent - 45,957 votes). The remaining candidates gained less than 1 percent of votes, with their support as follows: Patrik Dubovsky (0.71 percent - 16,107 votes), Marian Kotleba (0.56 percent - 12,771 votes) and Milan Nahlik (0.13 percent - 3,111 votes).
Slovaks were electing their president in a direct election for the sixth time in the history of the independent Slovakia. Slovakia has had five presidents so far. The first one was Michal Kovac, who was elected by parliament, however. The public elected their head of state for the first time directly in 1999, choosing Rudolf Schuster. He was twice followed by Ivan Gasparovic at the helm of the country. The next president was Andrej Kiska, and Zuzana Caputova is the current head of state. Her term in office will expire on June 15.
Round two of the presidential election will be held on April 6.
