The first round of the election took place on 22 December 2019, with former Social Democratic Prime Minister Zoran Milanović winning by a plurality of 29.55% of the vote, ahead of conservative incumbent President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, who received 26.65% of the vote. The conservative folk musician and former Member of Parliament Miroslav Škoro, who was running as an independent candidate, narrowly failed to reach the run-off election, managing to attract the support of 24.45% of voters. This marked the first time in Croatian history that the incumbent president did not receive the highest number of votes in the first round. Also, Grabar-Kitarović attained both the lowest number of votes (507,626) and the lowest percentage of votes of any Croatian president competing in either of the two rounds of elections. Milanović received both the lowest number of votes (562,779) and the lowest percentage of the vote of any first-place candidate in the first round of a presidential election. Škoro received the highest number of votes (465,703) for a third-placed candidate since Mate Granić (HDZ) in the 2000 elections and the highest-ever percentage of the vote for a candidate who did not advance to the run-off. Milanović received a plurality of the vote in Croatia's three largest cities; 33.02% in Zagreb, 30.79% in Split and 41.87% in Rijeka, and finished second (25.61%) in the fourth largest city, Osijek, which was won by Škoro (33.33%). Grabar-Kitarović came in second in Split and Rijeka, and third in Zagreb and Osijek.