2004 Slovak presidential election

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3 April 2004 (first round)
17 April 2004 (second round)

2009 →

Turnout

47.94% (first round)

25.95pp
43.50% (second round)

31.95pp


Nominee	Ivan Gašparovič	Vladimír Mečiar
Party	HZD	ĽS–HZDS
Popular vote	1,079,592	722,368
Percentage	59.91%	40.09%

First round results by district

Second round results by district

President before election

Rudolf Schuster
Independent

Elected President

Ivan Gašparovič
HZD

Presidential elections were held in Slovakia on 3 April 2004, with a second round on 17 April. Although former Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar received the most votes in the first round, he was defeated by Ivan Gašparovič in the run-off.

Eduard Kukan, who had led the opinion polling prior to the elections, was surprisingly eliminated in the first round, narrowly beaten into third place by Gašparovič. Gašparovič later admitted that he had not expect to qualify for the second round, and on first round election night he had gone home to sleep and only found out about his success when he was woken up by phone calls from friends.

Incumbent president Rudolf Schuster finished fourth with just 7% of the vote. He subsequently retired from politics.

Opinion polls

Date	Agency	Schuster	Kukan	Mečiar	Gašparovič	Bútora	Mikloško	Roman	Králik	Kalman	Šesták	Bernát	Kubík
11–17 February 2004	Focus	17.5	27.5	23.1	13.7	6.1	4.7	5.4	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.4	0.1
9 March 2004	OMV	15.5	27.9	22.4	15.8	6.3	6.7	3.4	0.6	0.4	0.2	0.6	0.2
16–22 March 2004	Markant	9.7	30.3	23.3	19.7	5.5	4.4	—	—	—	—	—	—
27 March 2004	OMV	13.0	27.0	24.2	17.1	6.5	8.7	1.1	0.8	0.8	0.2	0.4	0.2

Results


Candidate		Party	First round		Second round
Candidate		Party	Votes	%	Votes	%
	Vladimír Mečiar	People's Party – Movement for a Democratic Slovakia	650,242	32.74	722,368	40.09
	Ivan Gašparovič	Movement for Democracy	442,564	22.28	1,079,592	59.91
	Eduard Kukan	Slovak Democratic and Christian Union	438,920	22.10
	Rudolf Schuster	Independent	147,549	7.43
	František Mikloško	Christian Democratic Movement	129,414	6.52
	Martin Bútora	Independent	129,387	6.51
	Ján Králik [sk]	Party of the Democratic Left	15,873	0.80
	Jozef Kalman [sk]	Left Bloc [sk]	10,221	0.51
	Július Kubík [sk]	Independent	7,734	0.39
	Jozef Šesták	Independent	6,785	0.34
	Stanislav Bernát [sk]	Independent	5,719	0.29
	Ľubomír Roman	Alliance of the New Citizen	1,806	0.09
Total			1,986,214	100.00	1,801,960	100.00

Valid votes			1,986,214	98.53	1,801,960	98.56
Invalid/blank votes			29,675	1.47	26,347	1.44
Total votes			2,015,889	100.00	1,828,307	100.00
Registered voters/turnout			4,204,899	47.94	4,202,597	43.50
Source: Nohlen & Stöver, European Election Database, Our Campaigns

References

Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) Elections in Europe: A data handbook, p1747 ISBN 978-3-8329-5609-7
Nohlen & Stöver, pp1755-1756
"Voľby 2004: Gašparovič doma spal, úspech nečakal". Sme.sk. Retrieved 10 August 2016.
TA3, TA3.COM (4 April 2004). "Televízia TA3 | Rudolf Schuster bol prvým priamo zvoleným prezidentom". TA3.com (in Slovak). Retrieved 9 February 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

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v t e Slovak presidential elections
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