Neither camp is expected to win an outright majority in the 151-seat Parliament, making it likely that the government’s make-up will be decided in post-election talks with smaller parties.
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The Croatian Democratic Union, known as HDZ, won the same number.
“These are the most important elections in the past four years, all this before it was just a game”, he said.
Croatia’s economy, one of the most fragile in Europe, grew slightly this year after six years of recession.
Under the Croatian law, eight seats in the parliament are reserved for national minorities and three for the diaspora. Officials of Most, an alliance of independent local tickets, had refused to commit to either of the big parties throughout the campaign and did not do so immediately after the vote.
Turnout was at 46.6 percent of the electorate two and a half hours before polls closed, higher than during the last general election in 2011 when the left-wing coalition won.
According to the constitution, the president must consult parliamentary parties and nominate a prime minister-designate who has the support of the majority of MPs. “Croatia desperately needs a change”.
“We’ve promised the people we will not enter coalitions with either the Social Democrats or the HDZ”, Ljubica Ambrusec, mayor of the town of Gradec and one of Most’s elected lawmakers, said by phone.
Police secure the building of state TV as members and supporters of…
Over 320,000 people came to Croatia, a country of 4.4 million, since mid-September, en route to Germany. Its debt is 90 percent of GDP. Here the former prime minister, Zoran Milanovic, votes on Sunday.
The new European Union country has an unemployment at 15.4 percent with the opposition accusing the SDP of failure to adress the economic problems since the country was hit by the global financial crisis in mid-2008. His party has also campaigned on the role it played splitting the Adriatic state from the former Yugoslavia following the fall of communism.
The crisis seems to have helped diplomat-turned-politician Milanovic.
Milanovic’s government has been criticized by the conservatives for allowing the free flow of migrants and have hinted they would build fences and deploy the army to the border to stop the flow.
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Voting will be held in Croatia on Sunday and in 48 countries on Saturday and Sunday. Both the incumbents Social Democrats and the Conservative opposition have the chance to form a government.
