2015 Croatian parliamentary election

2015 Croatian parliamentary election

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All 151 seats in the Croatian Parliament 76 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	63.06% ( 6.77pp)
Party Leader % Seats +/– Patriotic Coalition Tomislav Karamarko 34.64 59 +12 Croatia is Growing Zoran Milanović 33.38 56 −27 Most Božo Petrov 13.64 19 New Human Shield Collective leadership 4.54 1 New Labour & Solidarity Milan Bandić 3.39 2 New IDS–PGS–Rl Boris Miletić 1.90 3 0 Successful Croatia Radimir Čačić 1.57 1 New HDSSB Dragan Vulin 1.37 2 −4 Minority lists SDSS Vojislav Stanimirović 77.63 3 0 MESZ Sándor Juhás 50.23 1 0 Kali Sara Veljko Kajtazi 41.41 1 New Independents — – 3 +2 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. Result by constituency Prime Minister before Prime Minister after Zoran Milanović SDP Tihomir Orešković Non-partisan

Parliamentary elections were held in Croatia on 8 November 2015.^[1] All 151 seats in the Parliament were up for election. This parliamentary election was the 8th since the first multi-party election in 1990 and the first since Croatia joined the European Union in 2013. The ruling center-left Croatia is Growing coalition, led by Prime Minister Zoran Milanović, was challenged by the center-right Patriotic Coalition led by the HDZ and headed by its party chairman Tomislav Karamarko, and also faced several new political coalitions.

The elections produced a hung parliament, with the ruling Croatia is Growing coalition winning 56 seats in the 10 electoral constituencies within Croatia and 3 of the 8 representatives of national minorities (Ermina Lekaj-Prljaskaj and Veljko Kajtazi are members of HNS and Sándor Juhász is a member of SDP). The opposition Patriotic Coalition won 56 seats within Croatia and all three seats allocated to Croatian citizens living abroad, winning 59 seats, technically tying with the ruling coalition. The IDS-PGS-RI coalition was expected to side with Croatia is Growing, as well as the remaining 5 minority representatives, giving Prime Minister Milanović's coalition 67 seats to 59 for Karamarko's opposition coalition. This left Milanović 9 seats short of a majority, while Karamarko needed 17 seats.

The third-placed MOST led by Metković mayor Božo Petrov, which won 19 seats, was expected to be the deciding factor in the formation of the next government of Croatia. After the election Drago Prgomet of MOST stated that neither Milanović nor Karamarko would be their choice for Prime Minister and that MOST will decide on who will head the 13th government of Croatia.^[2] Some within MOST had stated they prefer the formation of a national unity government made up of HDZ, SDP and MOST, though this was considered extremely unlikely.^[3] On 11 November Patriotic coalition leader Karamarko openly rejected the prospect of an HDZ-SDP-MOST government.^[4] This was followed by more than 45 days of negotiations between all three coalitions.

On 22 December it was stated that Croatia is Growing would form a government with MOST, however, on 23 December, MOST decided to give its support to a government with the HDZ. The coalition was further supported by Milan Bandić 365 and two independent minority representatives, giving them a slim majority of 78 seats in Parliament, two more than the required 76 seats. They nominated a Croatian-Canadian businessman named Tihomir Orešković, who was generally unknown to the public and who had spent most of his life in Canada, to be the next prime minister.^[5][6] A new government finally took office on 22 January 2016 with Orešković as the 11th Prime Minister, after a record 76 days of negotiations.