Dragan Primorac and Zoran Milanovic will compete in Croatia’s runoff presidential election on January 12 after Milanovic led but was unable to win the first round.
Despite leading his closest opponent by over 30 percentage points, Zoran Milanovic, the incumbent president of Croatia and the ally of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), narrowly lost the first round of Sunday’s presidential elections.
99.67 percent of the votes have been counted, according to unofficial figures released by the State Electoral Commission (DIP).
Even though exit surveys initially predicted Milanovic would receive over 50% of the vote, the actual results show he received 49.1%.
Dragan Primorac, a former education minister and candidate for the ruling center-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), who garnered 19.4% of the vote, will be his opponent in the second round.
Although HDZ representatives admitted that they did not anticipate such a large disparity, they stressed that the second round represented a new beginning, while the SDP felt both happiness and disappointment.
Milanovic and Primorac will compete in a run-off on January 12 if the findings are verified.
