2020 Croatian parliamentary election

In the previous parliamentary election, held on 11 September 2016, the center-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) won an upset plurality of seats - receiving 61 MPs in the parliament, while the opposition People's Coalition won 54 seats.[14] Therefore, HDZ chairman Andrej Plenković began talks on the formation of a governing majority with the third-placed Bridge of Independent Lists (Most) party, as well as with MPs representing national minorities. Meanwhile, as a result of the defeat of his coalition the SDP chairman (and People's Coalition Prime Ministerial candidate), Zoran Milanović, announced his withdrawal from politics.[15] A few weeks after the election, HDZ and Most successfully concluded their coalition talks and agreed to form a government that would rely on the outside support of the 8 Members of Parliament representing the national minorities. As a result, on 10 October 2016, Plenković presented 91 signatures of support from MPs to President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović and she, therefore, proceeded to give him a 30-day mandate (expiring on 9 November 2016) to form a government. Thereafter, Parliament formally convened on 14 October 2016 with the election of Most chairman Božo Petrov as a Speaker, while a parliamentary vote held on 19 October 2016 confirmed the proposed Cabinet of Andrej Plenković by a vote of 91 in favor, 45 against and 3 abstentions.[16] Thus, Plenković became the 12th Prime Minister of Croatia, while his cabinet became the fourteenth to hold the office since the first multi-party election took place in 1990 – while Croatia was still a constituent republic of SFR Yugoslavia.

Most left the governing coalition in April 2017, amid a disagreement with the HDZ over Finance Minister Zdravko Marić's alleged withholding of information relating to financial irregularities in Agrokor - one of Croatia's largest firms, which had brought about a crisis due to Agrokor not being able to pay back its loans. Thus, as the HDZ-led government was left without a clear parliamentary majority (and a no-confidence vote in Marić was only narrowly avoided by a 75–75 split vote in Parliament), the possibility of an early election (the third in 18 months) greatly increased during May. However, in June the Plenković government managed to regain a parliamentary majority by forming a new cabinet, which included members of the center-left Croatian People's Party - Liberal Democrats (HNS-LD). Yet, the decision to enter into government with the HDZ - made by the HNS-LD's central body, was quite unexpected and thus immediately created a split within the HNS-LD. Namely, only five of the party's nine MPs decided to support the newly formed coalition, while the remaining four (including former party chair Vesna Pusić) opted instead to form a new political party - named the Civic-Liberal Alliance (Glas), and remain in the opposition.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and his HDZ party have faced criticism from numerous activists, public figures and political opponents for allegedly dissolving the Parliament several months in advance in order to avoid holding elections during a major economic crisis (caused by the COVID-19 pandemic), which is expected to have a severe impact on Croatia in autumn, once the financial losses in the tourism sector are included in economic projections.

Many citizens of Zagreb have accused the government and the ruling HDZ party of leaving them unprotected for several months by dissolving the Parliament and by failing to adopt the necessary legal measures to deal with the earthquake damage before doing so. Namely, instead of pursuing the adoption of a set of emergency laws, the government has decided to delay any new legal framework on this issue by at least 3 to 6 months. This caused activists from several public platforms - mainly from Green-Left coalition, to gathered on St. Mark's Square on 17 May 2020, where they remained for 24 hours in order to protest against the resolution on the early dissolution of parliament.[17]

As soon as parliament was dissolved the HDZ's local branch in the city of Vukovar (the site of one of the most major and emotionally symbolic battles in the Croatian War of Independence) decided to cut its ties with the party's central organization, claiming that they felt that their city has been misused for political gain and that the government had also failed to provide it with opportunities for economic development. Thus, this former branch of the HDZ will contest the election as part of some other coalition.[18]

Geographic electoral districts (I-X)

The 151 members of the Croatian Parliament are elected from 10 geographical and two special electoral districts:[21]

• 140 seats are elected in ten geographical 14-seat electoral districts (1st–10th Electoral Districts) by open list proportional representation (using a 5% electoral threshold) with seats allocated using the d'Hondt method
• 3 seats are elected in a special electoral district (11th Electoral District) for Croatian citizens living abroad
• 8 seats are elected from an electoral district for national minorities (12th Electoral District): 3 seats for Serbian, 1 seat for Italian, 1 seat for Hungarian, 1 seat for Czech and Slovak, 1 seat for Albanian, Bosnian, Macedonian, Montenegrin and Slovenian, and 1 seat for Austrian, Bulgarian, German, Jewish, Polish, Roma, Romanian, Rusyn, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vlach national minority

The following graph depicts the evolution of standings of the two main political parties and other parties in the poll average since last parliamentary elections.

  HDZ

  SDP

  Most

  ŽZ

  BM 365

  IDS-DDI

  Pametno

  HNS-LD

  HSS

  SSIP

  GLAS

  NHR

  NLMK

  Hrast / HS

  DPMŠ

  ZLK

Results of the election based on the majority of votes in each municipality of Croatia and Zagreb's four electoral districts
  HDZ-led coalition
  Restart Coalition
  HNS–LD
  DPMŠ-led coalition
  NS–R
  Enough of Robbery
  Lacković independent list
  SIP–Pametno–Fokus

Results by municipality, showing vote share of the winning party.

The ruling HDZ obtained an upset victory over the Restart Coalition, who had previously been leading in opinion polls for several weeks prior to the elections. The HDZ likely received a boost from public approval over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic also caused voter turnout to be the lowest since the first democratic elections in 1990, with under half of registered voters participating.

Party		Votes	%	Seats	+/–
	HDZ–HSLS–HDS–HDSSB[lower-roman 1]	621,035	37.26	66	+5
	SDP–HSS–GLAS–IDS–HSU–SNAGA–PGS[lower-roman 2]	414,645	24.87	41	–4
	DPMŠ–HS–HKS–HRAST−BzH–ZL−SU[lower-roman 3]	181,493	10.89	16	New
	Bridge of Independent Lists	123,194	7.39	8	–5
	Green–Left (M!–RF–NL–ORaH)[lower-roman 4]	116,483	6.99	7	New
	SIP–Smart–Focus[lower-roman 5]	66,399	3.98	3	+3
	Enough of Robbery	37,628	2.26	0	–8
	Croatian People's Party – Liberal Democrats	21,727	1.30	1	–8
	People's Party – Reformists	16,900	1.01	1	0
	Bandić Milan 365 – Labour and Solidarity Party	9,897	0.59	0	–1
	Croatian Civic Party	7,399	0.44	0	0
	Right League (NHR and HSP)	7,266	0.44	0	New
	Democrats–HL–RI	6,594	0.40	0	New
	Authentic Croatian Party of Rights	5,343	0.32	0	0
	Pensioners Together Bloc	5,268	0.32	0	0
	Croatian Democratic Party	2,465	0.15	0	0
	Strength of Slavonia and Baranja	2,294	0.14	0	New
	Socialist Labour Party of Croatia	2,149	0.13	0	0
	Union of Kvarner	2,044	0.12	0	New
	Movement for a Modern Croatia	1,307	0.08	0	0
	My Beloved Croatia	978	0.06	0	New
	Authentic Croatian Peasant Party	958	0.06	0	0
	BDSH–HBPS	768	0.05	0	0
	Croatian Party of the Future	732	0.04	0	New
	Croatian Civil Resistance Party	714	0.04	0	New
	Independent List of Bura	626	0.04	0	New
	Free Croatia	605	0.04	0	0
	Croatian Perspective Party	576	0.03	0	0
	Croatian Community Party	405	0.02	0	New
	Croatian Party of Order	338	0.02	0	0
	Alphabet of Democracy	219	0.01	0	New
	Independents	8,524	0.51	0	–1
National minorities				8	0
Total		1,666,973	100.00	151	0
Valid votes		1,666,973	97.73
Invalid/blank votes		38,713	2.27
Total votes		1,705,686	100.00
Registered voters/turnout		3,672,555	46.44
Source: Izbori

Acknowledging his party's defeat in the legislative elections, Davor Bernardić stepped down as the leader of Social Democrats.[23]

On 6 July 2020, HDZ leader Andrej Plenković announced that he had collected the support of the necessary 76 MPs needed to form a government, following coalition negotiations. He announced that he had received support from his party and allies, the HNS – LD, the NS-R, and all 8 representatives of the national minorities.[24]

• 2020 in Croatia
• COVID-19 pandemic in Croatia

• Official website