Korčok and Pellegrini advance to second round, State Commission confirms

Ivan Korčok 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 the official results at a news conference on Sunday.

Korčok garnered 958,393 votes in the first round and Pellegrini 834,718. Štefan Harabin failed to advance to round two on 11.73 percent, as did Krisztián Forró (2.9 percent), Igor Matovič (2.18 percent) and Ján Kubiš (2.03 percent). The remaining candidates gained less than 1 percent of votes, with their support as follows: Patrik Dubovský (0.71 percent), Marián Kotleba (0.56 percent) and Milan Náhlik (0.13 percent).  

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 Gašparovič at the helm of the country. The next president was Andrej Kiska, and Zuzana Čaputová 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.

(TASR)