About 1.7 million eligible voters in Slovenia will be invited to cast their ballots on April 24 to elect the country's new Parliament.

Most polls predicted a close race between Prime Minister Janez Jansa's Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) and the center-left Freedom Movement (FM), a new party headed by Robert Golob.

Polls indicate that each of these two parties could win around 25 percent of the vote and several other parties could pass the 4-percent threshold for parliamentary representation.

After the election, a new government is expected to be forged. One of its main tasks would be battling the COVID-19 pandemic as Slovenia still registers hundreds of new cases each day, although most restrictions have been lifted over the past weeks as the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 has been falling gradually.

The new government would also have to deal with the rising cost of energy and high inflation, as well as the trade unions' demands for hefty wage increases.

The preliminary election results will be out late on Sunday.