site.btaUPDATED Croatia Holds Presidential Elections

Croatia held the first round of its presidential elections on Sunday.

The State Electoral Commission has admitted eight candidates to run in the eighth presidential elections since the country's independence: Miro Bulj of the Most party; Tomislav Jonjic (independent); Ivana Kekin of the We Can! political platform; Branka Lozo of the Home and National Rally; incumbent President Zoran Milanovic, backed by the Social Democratic Party, the Croatian Peasant Party, and eight other left-leaning political parties; Dragan Primorac, supported by the ruling Croatian Democratic Union and five other right-leaning parties; Marija Selak Raspudic (independent); and Niko Tokic Kartelo (independent).

Preliminary results based on tallies from 63.08% of polling stations showed that Milanovic was the front-runner with 50.09%, ahead of Dragan Primorac with 21.89%, Marija Selak Raspudic with 8.28%, and Ivana Kekin with 7.57%.

A total of 3,762,224 Croatian citizens were eligible to vote, both in Croatia and in 38 countries abroad.

At 7 a.m. local time (8 a.m. EET), more than 6,500 voting stations opened in Croatia. Voting ended at 7 p.m. local time.

Voter turnout in Croatia was reported at 36.09% by 4:30 p.m. The figure ranged by county from 43.61% in Varazdin to 28.52% in Vukovar-Syrmia and stood at 38.50% in the capital Zagreb.

Elections have already closed in Australia, where there are 1,074 registered voters, and will conclude in Chicago and Los Angeles on Monday. A total of 105 voting stations are open overseas, the largest number being in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 42, and Germany, 17.

Some 13,400 observers monitored the voting in Croatia, most of them in Zagreb, 1,773, and the fewest in Istria, 203. The 24,270 observers registered for the previous presidential elections five years ago were nearly double the present number.

The latest polls place Zoran Milanovic as the frontrunner. Milanovic and Primorac are expected to face each other in a run-off on January 12.

Since Croatia's first presidential elections in 1992, Franjo Tudman, Stjepan Mesic, Ivo Josipovic, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, and Zoran Milanovic have served as the country's presidents.