Slovenians voted on Sunday in parliamentary elections set to be a tight race between conservative Prime Minister Janez Jansa and a political newcomer in the polarised EU country. Jansa, 63, an ally of nationalist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and admirer of US ex-president Donald Trump, is polling head-to-head with Robert Golob, formerly a solar power entrepreneur. Sporting a tie in the national colours of Ukraine, blue and yellow, Jansa cast his vote early in his village of Arnace in the northwest. “Turnout will certainly be high and that is good…. I hope that we will continue along the path that was set,” Jansa told reporters. At midday, 21.05 percent of the 1.7 million electorate had voted — nearly four percent more than the 17.27 percent who turned out by same time in 2017, the Electoral Commission said. The three-time premier has campaigned on promises of stability, while analysts say concerns over the rule of law have boosted the opposition in the Alpine ex-Yugoslav state with a population of about two million. “Elections will decide how will Slovenia develop not only in the next four years but also during the whole next decade since many projects have been set up,” Jansa said. Tens of thousands of people have attended regular anti-government rallies, accusing Jansa of authoritarianism since he took power in March 2020. Billing the elections as a “referendum on democracy”, the opposition accuses Jansa of trying to undermine democratic institutions and press freedoms like his ally Orban in neighbouring Hungary. “If this pace continues, we will be very close to that (tightening of state control like in Hungary and Poland) in four years,” Uros Esih, a columnist at one of Slovenia’s leading dailies Delo, told AFP.