Zagreb, Dec 29 (EFE).- Croatia’s populist President Zoran Milanović won the first round of the country’s presidential election on Sunday, according to official results, but fell short of the outright majority predicted by exit polls and will face a runoff against conservative candidate Dragan Primorac.
With more than 99% of the votes counted, Milanović won with 49%, followed by his main rival Primorac with 19%, the Croatian State Election Commission announced.
Because none of the eight candidates received the absolute majority needed to become president, the two candidates with the most votes, Milanović and Primorac, will have to run again in the second round, scheduled for Jan. 12, 2025.
Milanović beat Primorac in all 21 regions of Croatia, while Primorac won abroad in about 40 countries.
Including in neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the entire Bosnian Croat population, one of the three constituent peoples of that country, has the right to vote in Croatian elections.
Milanović ran for a second term as president as the candidate of the Social Democratic Party (Socijaldemokratska partija Hrvatske, SDP) and nine other center-left parties, while Primorac, a university professor, forensic doctor, and geneticist, was the candidate of Prime Minister Andrej Plenković’s conservative Croatian Democratic Union (Hrvatska demokratska zajednica, HDZ).
Some 3.8 million Croatians went to the polls on Sunday to elect a president for a five-year term.
Conservative Marija Selak Raspudić, who ran as an independent, came in third with 9 % of the vote, followed by Ivana Kekin of the center-left We Can! – Political Platform (Možemo! – politička platforma) with just under 9%.
The position of president in Croatia is largely ceremonial, with the president acting as head of state, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and chief representative of the Republic of Croatia at home and abroad, but not as head of government. EFE
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