BRATISLAVA: Polls opened on Saturday in Slovakia's parliamentary election with the ruling party of Prime Minister Robert Fico campaigning on an anti-migrant ticket.

The leftist Smer-Social Democracy party is a clear favorite but analysts say Fico may have misjudged the public mood by focusing too much on Europe's migration crisis and not enough on Slovakia's own issues.

In the 2012 vote, Smer won a landslide, taking 44.4 percent of the vote. That allowed the party to govern alone, the first time one party has held sole power in Slovakia since the 1993 split of Czechoslovakia.

Fico favors a strong state role in the economy, has been critical of Western sanctions against Russia and is known for strong anti-Muslim rhetoric. Slovakia has not been part of the European route that hundreds of thousands of refugees are using — but Fico has still made it the central tenet of his campaign.

He is a vocal opponent of a compulsory EU plan to redistribute refugees in member states and is suing the EU over it.

Polls indicate Fico's party will get well above 30 percent, but that would mean he needs a coalition partner to govern. That could be the ultra-Nationalist Slovak National Party, which hopes to return to Parliament after a four-year absence.

President Andrej Kiska called on the Slovaks to come to the ballots.

"Everyone who cares about Slovakia should vote," Kiska said after casting his ballot in the northern city of Poprad.

Fico said he was ready "to respect any result."

Five other parties, including a party of ethnic Hungarians, have a chance to win parliamentary seats in Saturday's election, polls predicted. The Net party established by Radoslav Prochazka, a conservative lawmaker who went to Yale Law School, is the only one of them expected to win more than 10 percent.

If Fico's victory is not big enough, the five parties could possibly form a coalition to get a majority and send Fico into opposition.

Parliament's 150 seats are at stake, with 23 parties in the running.