Slovaks voted Saturday in municipal elections across the eastern European nation in what was seen as a first test at the polls for the new centre-right government and its austerity plans. Polling stations opened at 7:00 am (0600 GMT) for the more than four million eligible voters. Although no opinion polls were held before the elections, political analysts were not expecting a clear victory for either the ruling coalition of Prime Minister Iveta Radicova or the leftist opposition. Opposition leader Robert Fico said earlier this week that the priority for his Smer-Social Democracy party was to clinch the mayors' posts in Slovakia's two biggest towns -- the capital Bratislava and the eastern city of Kosice. The battle for mayor of Bratislava, a traditional stronghold of right-wing parties, is between former actress and ambassador Magda Vasaryova, nominated by the ruling coalition, and Milan Ftacnik, an independent candidate backed by the leftists. The municipal polls come just six months after a general election in which former prime minister Fico's Smer-Social Democracy came out on top, but was unable to form a coalition government. Instead, the SDKU party, promising fiscal austerity to get the crisis-hit economy back on track, teamed up with the Christian Democrats, liberals and ethnic Hungarians to form a centre-right coalition. That made Iveta Radicova the country's first woman prime minister. 'The opposition will try to turn the municipal elections into a revenge for the general election defeat,' said analyst Grigorij Meseznikov. 'Municipal elections are driven by local topics like transport, environment, corruption, but the opposition will try to interpret its possible victory as voters' dissatisfaction with the government's austerity measures,' he added. Polling stations will close at 8:00 pm (1900 GMT), with unofficial results expected to be published later the same evening and the official results on Sunday. 