On Sunday, former Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa's anti-immigration Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) got the most votes in national elections, drawing about 25 percent of the vote for 25 of the 90 seats in parliament. In second place was the center-left Marjan Sarec List (LMS) party, with 12.7 percent. LMS, contesting its first national election, is led by comedian and satirist Marjan Sarec, who calls his party anti-establishment. The only party that has said it would form a governing coalition with the SDS is the center-right Nova Slovenija party, which took 7.1 percent of the vote for seven seats.
Elections were called in March after center-left Prime Minister Miro Cerar stepped down after the Supreme Court ruled against his railway investment project and amid strikes. Jansa counts himself an admirer of nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban in neighboring Hungary, who rose to power on a stridently anti-immigrant platform. It isn't clear that immigration was a major factor in the SDS's qualified success.
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