Not much change in Croatia

Results from Wednesday’s election in Croatia (previewed here) suggest that the country’s voters are disinclined to radical change. The governing centre-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) has, as expected, lost some ground but remains in a strong position to continue in office. With 34.4% of the vote (down 2.8% on 2020) it has won 61 of the 151 seats (down five): short of a majority, but almost certainly enough to prevent a coalition being formed without it.

Some 200,000 votes behind is the Social Democratic Party (SDP) with 25.4% (up 0.5%) and 42 seats (up one). There are three other main forces to take into account: the far-right Homeland, 9.6% (down 1.3%) and 14 seats (down two); the Green-Left Coalition, 9.1% (up 2.1%) and ten seats (up three); and the conservative-centrist Bridge, 8.0% (up 0.6%) and 11 seats (up three). The remaining 13 seats will go to a range of mostly regional and ethnic minority parties. Turnout was 62.3%, up a massive 15.9 points.

(Official results are here, in Serbo-Croat, but there is no summary table; I have used the figures collected at Wikipedia. For seat totals I’ve relied on the report at Balkan Insight, which also has a good explanation of the electoral system. Note that the 5% threshold applies in each constituency, not for the country as a whole.)

Last time around the HDZ did a good job at corralling the ethnic minority parties into its corner; even if it can repeat the feat that would no longer be enough, but it would be close. An opposition majority would have to embrace the Green-Left, Bridge and all of the small parties, and even then it would only have a one-seat majority, with 76 seats against 75 for the HDZ plus Homeland. Green-Left leader Sandra Benčić says that such an outcome is “achievable”, but it seems a remote possibility.

Much more likely is that HDZ prime minister Andrej Plenković will continue in office with support from some combination of Homeland, Bridge and the small parties. But there will probably be an extensive period of negotiation before reaching that point, and the fact that president Zoran Milanović is an SDP partisan could make things difficult.

Meanwhile, in Wednesday’s other election, in Solomon Islands, results are coming in only slowly. We’ll have a look at that next week when there’s more to go on.