2011 Croatian parliamentary election
Parliamentary elections were held in Croatia on Sunday, 4 December 2011 to elect 151 members to the Croatian Parliament. They were the sixth parliamentary election in Croatia since independence.
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All 151 seats in the Croatian Parliament 76 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Turnout | 56.29% (3.19pp) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.
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Politics of Croatia |
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Elections were held in 10 electoral districts inside Croatia (each electing 14 members of parliament), one electoral district for Croatian citizens living abroad (3 members of parliament), and one electoral district for national minorities (8 members of parliament). Candidate lists have to win more than 5% of the votes in an electoral district in order to be represented in Parliament.
The previous elections were a close race between the two major political alliances and resulted with Ivo Sanader winning a second term as Prime Minister. After his sudden and unexpected resignation in mid-2009, Jadranka Kosor succeeded him as head of the governing party (Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ) and formed a new Government. Zoran Milanović, despite losing a close race four years ago, was again chosen to be the Opposition's candidate for prime minister.
Domestic policy and the economy were the main themes of the campaign. The cabinet supported by the parliamentary majority, marked by numerous corruption scandals, high unemployment and a grim economic outlook, was highly unpopular and had been lagging in the polls since early 2009.
The elections resulted in a resounding loss for the governing parties with HDZ and the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) receiving the lowest number of seats and the lowest share of the vote in their histories. HDZ lost a total of 21 seats, losing all but two electoral districts in the country. HSS was reduced to a sixth of its previous membership, with two sitting ministers losing their seats. The centre-left four party Kukuriku coalition, led by the Social Democratic Party of Croatia (SDP) contested the election, unlike four years ago, with a joint appearance and won the election in a landslide achieving an absolute majority with 81 elected members. All members of the coalition, except the Istrian Democratic Assembly (IDS), achieved their best results yet. This election was the first in which HDZ did not become the strongest individual party in Parliament, with the Social Democrats winning almost twenty more seats.