People in the central European country of Slovakia often joke that Americans do not know where their country is -- a recent beer commercial even showed an American-style news anchor pointing to a map that put Slovakia in Africa -- but Professor Kevin Deegan-Krause of Political Science showed that at least some Americans do care about Slovakia in the country’s recent elections.  

Deegan-Krause was a leading forecaster of Slovakia's election results, with 10 hours of live blogging on election night. His website, http://pozorblog.com, received over 10,000 hits that day and another 6,000 hits the following two days, mostly from readers in Slovakia. Most importantly, he was one of the first observers on election night to predict the runaway victory of the center-left Smer party despite exit polls pointing in the opposite direction. One of the leading Slovak newspapers reposted his posts and graphs through election night and featured his work in its paper with the headline "Exit polls were very imprecise, but an American got it right." 

Deegan-Krause has been forecasting Slovak elections for the past ten years, initially upon the request of the US State Department. In this election, he analyzed exit polls and early returns to help predict the result. 

A full interview with Deegan-Krause on this subject was published in Slovakia’s English-language weekly, The Slovak Spectator. For those who speak Slovak, you can read all about the post-election praise.