page_title: 2009–10 Croatian presidential election
section_title: Second round result analysis
hierarchical_section_title: 2009–10 Croatian presidential election / Summary of the results / Second round result analysis
caption_attribution_description: English: The results of the Croatian presidential election held on January 10, 2010.
context_page_description: Presidential elections were held in Croatia on 27 December 2009 and 10 January 2010. Twelve candidates participated in the first round, prior to a run-off between first-round winner Ivo Josipović and runner-up Milan Bandić. In the run-off, Josipović won a landslide victory, receiving 60.3% of the vote becoming the first elected president nominated by the Social Democratic Party of Croatia. The incumbent president Stjepan Mesić, who was first elected in 2000 as the candidate of the Croatian People's Party and re-elected in 2005 as an independent, was ineligible to seek re-election to a third term due to term limits.
  As the incumbent was ineligible for re-election, several candidates took the opportunity to run for the presidency. Most mainstream Croatian political parties participated in the elections either by nominating a candidate or endorsing one. The relatively low nomination threshold, turmoil in the largest political party due to the departure of long-time leader Ivo Sanader and the ongoing economic crisis, as well as a significant one-man revolt in the second-largest party, led to a record number of candidates contesting the elections.
context_section_description: The first round of the election saw the lowest turnout for any Croatian presidential election ever, so many political pundits at the beginning of the runoff campaign predicted an even lower turnout for the second round. However, as the campaign started to become more heated and the electoral body more divided, it was evident the runoff election would have a greater turnout than the first round. The increase in turnout was 277,661 people, of which 268,166 cast valid votes. Overall, 50.13% of citizens who are eligible to vote fulfilled their public right. That's a little more than 6 percentage points higher turnout than the first round and on pair with five years ago, but 10 percentage points less than 10 years ago and the lowest turnout for a runoff presidential election ever.
  Nationwide, Ivo Josipović achieved 1,339,385 votes, or 60.26%, while Milan Bandić won 883,222 votes, or 39.74%. Most polls before the election were showing Josipović with a hefty double-digit lead, but never as much as 20 percentage points as he achieved during the election. The difference between the two candidates came as a surprise to many pundits and analysts for two reasons: the polls usually favor the more liberal candidate since left-leaning voters tend to participate in opinion polls more than conservative voters; and the fact that most polls before the election didn't include the votes from the citizens living abroad, which was expected to be a strong boost for Bandić come Election Day. Nevertheless, the final result is similar to the result of the last several polls when only the certain voters were taken into account, which may indicate that few undecided voters actually went to the polls in the second round.
  Josipović won all Croatian counties except for the Lika-Senj county, the least populated Croatian county. Similarly, he won all cities with more than 20,000 inhabitants and all cities that are county seats, except for Gospić, which is also the smallest. The capital city Zagreb was also won by Josipović, with a margin that was slightly higher than the national average. Bandić was unsuccessful in the majority of Zagreb boroughs, but he did win Lika and the extraterritorial electoral unit, where the majority of votes came from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The closest margins were in the traditional right-wing strongholds in parts of Slavonia and Dalmatia.
  According to the exit polls Josipović won more than 90% of Vesna Pusić's voters and 70% of Nadan Vidošević's voters. He also managed to consolidate the traditionally centre-left voters winning 90% of his party's as well as more than 80% of HNS voters and more than 70% of the centrist HSLS and centre-right HSS voters, at the same time appealing to every fourth HDZ voter. Bandić won almost 80% of all Hebrang voters as well as 57% of Primorac's voters and obtained 3 quarters of all HDZ voters, confirming the assumption that Bandić mostly appealed to the right.
  The result was not received particularly well by the Church gazette Glas Koncila editor Ivan Miklenić, who stated Josipović's legitimacy, but first pointed out that he was elected by less than a third of the total population, and claimed that he was supported by "obscure power centers". He concluded that the election is the result of a policy of continuation and "not a democratic breakthrough". The secular Jutarnji list editor Davor Butković lambasted that opinion, saying he was personally a Catholic but was offended by the notion that the Church would undermine the election result. Having a third of the electorate's votes is not relevant because not even the late Franjo Tuđman or even any single Government was ever elected with more than a half of the electorate. He concluded by asking why the Church is "insulting its faithful who voted for Josipović" and saying that as long as this kind of a stance persists, the Croatian churches will "remain empty other than on major holidays". The secular Večernji list chief commentator Milan Ivkošić once again called on Josipović to stay away from former President Mesić's "selective finger-pointing"
caption: Results of the second round
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