The front runner Lojze Peterle, supported by the governing conservative coalition, won the first round with far fewer votes than predicted by opinion polls.

The president also proposes candidates for various state offices, as well as judicial appointments to the Constitutional and Supreme Court, which must be approved by the National Assembly.

Prime Minister Janez Drnovšek of the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia stood for the office, comfortably winning the runoff against conservative candidate Barbara Brezigar.

Between 2002 and 2004, the relationship between President Drnovšek and Janez Janša, then leader of the opposition, were considered more than good[7] and in the first year of cohabitation, no major problems arose.

When he reemerged in late 2005 he had changed his lifestyle: he became a vegan, moved out of the capital into the countryside, and withdrew from party politics completely, ending his already frozen membership in the Liberal Democracy.

[11] The disagreements moved to issues of domestic politics in October 2006, when Drnovšek publicly criticised the treatment of the Romani family Strojans.

The President reacted with a harsh criticism of the government's policies, accusing the ruling coalition of abusing its power for personal delegitimation[14] and labeled the Prime Minister as "the leader of the negative guys".

[17] The first official candidate was Lojze Peterle, a conservative member of the European Parliament and first democratically elected Prime Minister of Slovenia (1990–1992), who announced his candidacy in November 2006.

[22] However, after months of mixed signals, Pahor finally announced that he would instead concentrate on the general election and would not run for the mostly ceremonial office of the president.

[23] The Social Democrats then nominated Danilo Türk, a former Slovenian ambassador and high official in the United Nations, who at the time was a professor at the University of Ljubljana's Faculty of Law.

[30] Early polls indicated that Peterle, who had been campaigning for months and had cultivated the image of a "man of the people", would win the election in a runoff against Türk or possibly Gaspari.

[33] Pečarič was supported by non-aligned Majda Širca, independent Slavko Gaber and Roberto Battelli, representative of the Italian minority in Slovenia.

Jože Andrejaš, Jožef Horvat, Matej Sedmak, Marjan Beranič, Marko Kožar and Pavel Premrl failed to gather sufficient public support or later decided to withdraw from the race.

[38] The footage was used by Franci Kek and Vojko Anzeljc in a film Gola resnica, airing in early 2009 and addressing objectivity of media, problems with election legislation and reactions from Slovenes.

Opposition parties, representing the left-wing of Slovenian politics, disliked this move because the record of voters' addresses was not always reliable, and also because the rules had been changed after the campaign had already started.

[41] They particularly opposed the change because voters from abroad seemed to favor right-wing parties, so that in the event of a very close ballot, votes from non-residents could tip the scale in favour of Peterle.

This had led to Janša's government changing the law, enabling the religious communities to request a review of trials of their deceased members, something which had previously been reserved only for close relatives.

After the Archdiocese of Ljubljana initiated the review, the Supreme Court annulled the 1946 trial on procedural grounds, effectively rehabilitating Rožman, a decision that caused much controversy.

[4] Prime Minister Janez Janša blamed Peterle's poor showing on certain topics that were brought up during the campaign by "hidden centres of power".

This was a reference to the journalists' petition, the timing of the Supreme Court's decision on the Rožman case and misinterpretation of Janša's and Minister of Economy Andrej Vizjak's remarks on reasons for Slovenia's high inflation in 2007.

[48] Following the unexpected results of the first round, new opinion polls showed major changes, giving Türk a large lead over Peterle.

Peterle alleged that at the time when he, as Prime Minister, struggled for Slovenia's independence, Türk continued to act as an official representative of Yugoslavia in international institutions.

He said that "it is particularly worrying that a lot of energy was invested in blackening the Government abroad," claiming his opponents portrayed Slovenia "as Belarus" or some other authoritarian country.

The opposition parties said that talk of resignation just weeks before Slovenia took over European Union presidency was irresponsible and unwise,[60] but the Prime Minister called a vote of confidence for 19 November 2007.

[57] Türk was also expected to maintain Slovenia's alliance with the United States even though he was highly critical of the war in Iraq, as Al Jazeera reported.