At a national level, Slovenia

Slovenia

Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...

 elects a head of state

Head of State

A head of state is the individual that serves as the chief public representative of a monarchy, republic, federation, commonwealth or other kind of state. His or her role generally includes legitimizing the state and exercising the political powers, functions, and duties granted to the head of...

 (a president

President

A president is a leader of an organization, company, trade union, university, or country.Etymologically, a president is one who presides, who sits in leadership...

) and a legislature

Legislature

A legislature is a kind of deliberative assembly with the power to pass, amend, and repeal laws. The law created by a legislature is called legislation or statutory law. In addition to enacting laws, legislatures usually have exclusive authority to raise or lower taxes and adopt the budget and...

. The president is elected for a five year term by the people using the Run-Off system. The National Assembly (Državni zbor), Slovenia's parliament

Parliament

A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modeled after that of the United Kingdom. The name is derived from the French , the action of parler : a parlement is a discussion. The term came to mean a meeting at which...

, has 90 members each elected for four-year terms. All but two of these are elected using the D'Hondt Method

D'Hondt method

The d'Hondt method is a highest averages method for allocating seats in party-list proportional representation. The method described is named after Belgian mathematician Victor D'Hondt who described it in 1878...

 of list proportional representation. The remaining two members are elected by the Italian and Hungarian ethnic minorities

Minority group

A minority is a sociological group within a demographic. The demographic could be based on many factors from ethnicity, gender, wealth, power, etc. The term extends to numerous situations, and civilizations within history, despite the misnomer of minorities associated with a numerical statistic...

 using the Borda count

Borda count

The Borda count is a single-winner election method in which voters rank candidates in order of preference. The Borda count determines the winner of an election by giving each candidate a certain number of points corresponding to the position in which he or she is ranked by each voter. Once all...

.

Slovenia's multi-party system means that any one party is unlikely to gain power alone. Coalition government

Coalition government

A coalition government is a cabinet of a parliamentary government in which several political parties cooperate. The usual reason given for this arrangement is that no party on its own can achieve a majority in the parliament...

s must therefore be negotiated and formed.

2008 Parliamentary election

2007 Presidential election

Further reading

• Toplak, Jurij. The parliamentary election in Slovenia, October 2004. Electoral Studies 25 (2006) 825-831.

External links

• Adam Carr's Election Archive
• Parties and elections
• NSD: European Election Database - Slovenia publishes regional level election data; allows for comparisons of election results, 1992-2008