Slovenians voted in snap elections Sunday with centre-left Prime Minister Borut Pahor expected to become the latest casualty of the eurozone debt crisis. Turnout was 18.7 percent at 1210 GMT, compared with 19.7 percent at the same time in 2008 elections, according to the government website, after opinion polls predicted it could reach as high as 70 percent.
Former premier Janez Jansa of the centre-right Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), who campained on promises of structural reforms and spending cuts, was expected to dislodge Pahor, 48, although an election-eve survey showed his lead narrowing.
The poll gave the SDS 28.5 percent of voter support, ahead of Positive Slovenia, a new centre-left party founded by Ljubljana's popular millionaire mayor Zoran Jankovic, on 24.6 percent.
Pahor's Social Democrats were seen crashing to third place with between 10 and 14 percent of the vote. A confident Jankovic, 58, said after casting his ballot that with his experience as Ljubljana's mayor and as manager of the country's largest supermarket chain Mercator he would concentrate on the economy's recovery, "and that is a field on which I'm sure I and my team are very strong."
Slovenian President Danilo Turk said, for his part, "I believe this process (early elections) will provide a stable government that will then quickly start dealing with all the tasks ahead of us, in particular financial stabilisation."
Pahor's government lost a confidence vote in September after major reforms to the creaking pension system were rejected in a referendum, prompting early elections after just two years in office. The debt crisis in the 17-nation eurozone has already led to a change in government in a string of countries, including Portugal, Greece, Italy and most recently Spain.
Although still in a far better state than many euro members, since joining in 2007 Slovenia's national debt as a proportion of output has roughly doubled to 45.5 percent, according to the European Commission.
The three main credit agencies have cut their ratings on Slovenian debt in recent months, and last month interest rates hit seven percent - a level that forced other countries to seek outside support.
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