2005 Croatian presidential election
Presidential elections were held in Croatia in January 2005, the fourth such elections since independence in 1991. They were the first presidential elections held after the constitutional changes of November 2000, which replaced a semi-presidential system with an incomplete parliamentary system, greatly reducing the powers of the President in favor of the Prime Minister and their cabinet. Incumbent president Stjepan Mesić, who had been elected in 2000 as the candidate of the Croatian People's Party, was eligible to seek reelection to a second term and ran as an independent as the constitution prohibits the President from holding party membership while in office.
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| Turnout | 50.57% (first round) 51.04% (second round) | ||||||||||||||||
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Results of the second round in all of Croatia's counties: the candidate with the majority of votes in each administrative division. Stjepan Mesić Jadranka Kosor | |||||||||||||||||
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Politics of Croatia |
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The elections resulted in the landslide re-election of Mesić for a second five-year term. They were also the first in which a woman, HDZ candidate Jadranka Kosor, took part in the runoff. The percentage of the vote received by Mesić in the second round – 65.93% – is the highest of any president to date. Mesić had received an absolute majority of the votes cast within Croatia itself in the first round, but the votes of Croatian citizens living abroad forced a run-off by reducing Mesić's overall percentage to just under the necessary 50% + 1 vote threshold needed to win in the first round. Voter turnout was 50.57% in the first round and 51.04% in the second round.
Mesić was sworn in for a second term on 18 February 2005 by the Chief justice of the Constitutional Court.