2004 Slovak presidential election

Presidential elections were held in Slovakia on 3 April 2004, with a second round on 17 April.<ref name=NS>Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) Elections in Europe: A data handbook, p1747 Template:ISBN</ref> Although former Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar received the most votes in the first round, he was defeated by Ivan Gašparovič in the run-off.<ref>Nohlen & Stöver, pp1755–1756</ref>

Eduard Kukan, who had led the opinion polling prior to the elections, was surprisingly eliminated in the first round, narrowly beaten into third place by Gašparovič. Gašparovič later admitted that he had not expect to qualify for the second round, and on first round election night he had gone home to sleep and only found out about his success when he was woken up by phone calls from friends.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Incumbent president Rudolf Schuster finished fourth with just 7% of the vote. He subsequently retired from politics.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Opinion polls

Date	Agency	Schuster	Kukan	Mečiar	Gašparovič	Bútora	Mikloško	Roman	Králik	Kalman	Šesták	Bernát	Kubík
Template:Nowrap	Focus	17.5	27.5	23.1	13.7	6.1	4.7	5.4	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.4	0.1
9 March 2004	OMV	15.5	27.9	22.4	15.8	6.3	6.7	3.4	0.6	0.4	0.2	0.6	0.2
16–22 March 2004	Markant	9.7	30.3	23.3	19.7	5.5	4.4	Template:N/A	Template:N/A	Template:N/A	Template:N/A	Template:N/A	Template:N/A
27 March 2004	OMV	13.0	27.0	24.2	17.1	6.5	8.7	1.1	0.8	0.8	0.2	0.4	0.2