Updated 7.55pm

A small liberal party led by political newcomer Robert Golob leads Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa's conservatives in parliamentary elections on Sunday, an exit poll showed, amid concerns over rule-of-law issues in the deeply polarised EU member.

Freedom Movement (GS) garnered 35.8% of the vote, compared to 22.5% for three-time premier Jansa's Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), according to exit polls.

Analysts say concerns over the rule of law have boosted the opposition in the Alpine ex-Yugoslav state with a population of about two million.

Golob, a 55-year-old former power company manager, has promised to restore "normality" and billed the elections as a "referendum on democracy".

Tens of thousands of people have attended regular anti-government rallies, accusing Jansa of authoritarianism since he took power in March 2020.

The opposition accuses Jansa of trying to undermine democratic institutions and press freedoms like his ally Viktor Orban in neighbouring Hungary.

Jansa, 63, an admirer of US ex-president Donald Trump, has campaigned on promises of stability.

Sporting a tie in the national colours of Ukraine, blue and yellow, Jansa cast his vote early in his village of Arnace in the northwest.

"Elections will decide how will Slovenia develop not only in the next four years but also during the whole next decade since many projects have been set up," Jansa told reporters.

'Breaking point'

Uros Esih, a columnist at one of Slovenia's leading dailies Delo, told AFP said ahead of the elections that they represented a "breaking point" with "liberal and illiberal political forces clashing" in Slovenia.

"I hope the situation will change... It is obvious that most of the people are not satisfied with this government and the way it's governing," Sara Rigler, a 21-year-old psychology student, told AFP at a polling station in the capital Ljubljana.

The rise of Golob began when he took over a small Green party in January, renaming it Freedom Movement (GS).

Golob also has the backing of several centre-left opposition parties with whose help he could be able to form a majority in the 90-member parliament.

Analysts have been expecting an increased turnout with voters turning against Jansa's style.

At 4pm (1400 GMT), 49.3% of the 1.7 million electorate had voted - compared to 34.4% who turned out by same time in the last parliamentary elections in 2018, the Electoral Commission said.

His image in the last two years has also been hurt by rows with Brussels over his moves to suspend funding to the national news agency and drag out the appointment of prosecutors to the bloc's new anti-graft body.

'Important' elections

Though Jansa was among the first foreign leaders to travel to Kyiv, on March 15, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Moscow's assault has not taken centre stage in Slovenia's election campaign.

"These elections are absolutely important... I hope and wish that this government stays. It has been doing a great job," priest Andrej Mazej told AFP at the voting station in Jansa's village.

Jansa already served as prime minister between 2004 and 2008, and 2012-2013. Only a year into his second term as premier, he was forced out by a corruption scandal.

The polls would decide "between democracy and autocracy", wrote Igor Krsinar, a columnist for Reporter Magazine, a rare critical conservative voice.