Thousands of high school students participated in European mock elections
On May 14, 2014, Institute for Public Affairs (IVO) in cooperation with high schools around Slovakia organized the second student mock elections this year (after Student Presidential Elections in March 2014).
The European mock elections were carried out according to the same rules as ordinary elections and took place in 62 high schools in all regions of Slovakia. Students could vote for one of 29 running political parties and could cast their preferential vote for two party's candidates. Almost 14-thousand Slovak students aged 15+ had a chance to vote 10-days before the real elections in the European Parliament.
Official elections results
The mock elections saw the engagement of 6,175 voting students from 13,498 eligible voters. The overall turnout climbed to 45.75 percent.
The winner of mock European elections was the ruling party Smer-SD (11.5 %) followed by non-parliamentary Peoples’ Party Our Slovakia (10.8 %). Both parties would take three mandates. Two mandates would obtain each of following three parties: OĽaNO, SaS and KDH (8.7% and 6.7% and 6.2%, respectively). One seat would go for the party SMS headed by the popular former ice-hockey player Golonka.
While six successful partied obtained 50.2 % of ballots, as many as 49.8 % of votes were cast for parties which did not reach the 5-% quorum. Preferential voting for candidates attracted much attention - students circled up to two thirds of all possible candidates.
In the mock elections, high school students sent to the EP the following thirteen personalities:
Institute for Public Affairs announced the official results of Student mock European elections on a press conference on May 16th.
From the left: Miroslav Kollár, leader of the project (IVO), Zora Bútorová, sociologist (IVO) and Ingrid Ludvíková (Representation of European Commission in Slovakia).
See how the voting day looked like in schools (Photo Gallery)
VIDEO
The elections were carried out also in high school in Banská Štiavnica.
On May 14, 2014, Institute for Public Affairs (IVO) in cooperation with high schools around Slovakia organized the second 
The mock elections saw the engagement of 6,175 voting students from 13,498 eligible voters. The overall turnout climbed to 45.75 percent. 
