Ruling leftists to win Slovak election but will need coalition - poll

BRATISLAVA (Reuters) - Prime Minister Robert Fico's leftist Smer party looked set to win Slovakia's national election on March 5 but would need a coalition partner to form a government, a Polis opinion poll showed. Smer, in power with a majority government since 2012, has three times the support of its nearest rival, the centrist party Siet, the poll, released late on Monday, showed. Fico's Smer, with 40 percent, would win 72 seats in the 150-member parliament. In the election three years ago, Smer won 44 percent of the vote. Siet looked set to win 13 percent, the ethnic Hungarian party, Most-Hid, 8.9 percent and nationalist Slovak National Party 8.2 percent, the survey found. The socially conservative Christian Democrats KDH and centrist party OLaNO-NOVA would also reach the five-percent threshold needed to win seats, the poll showed. The poll put turnout at 61 percent of eligible voters. (Reporting by Tatiana Jancarikova; Editing by Louise Ireland)