Croatian presidential election, 2009-2010

Croatian presidential election, 2009–10

2005 ← 27 December 2009 and 10 January 2010 → 2014–15

Turnout 44% (first round) 50.13% (second round)   Nominee Ivo Josipović Milan Bandić Party SDP Independent Popular vote 1,339,385 883,222 Percentage 60.26% 39.74%

Results of the second round in all of Croatia's counties: the candidate with the majority of votes in each administrative division.   Ivo Josipović   Milan Bandić

President before election Stjepan Mesić Independent Elected President Ivo Josipović SDP

Stjepan Mesić
Independent

Ivo Josipović
SDP

Presidential elections in Croatia were held on 27 December 2009 and 10 January 2010 with twelve candidates participating in the first round. The second round between first-round winner Ivo Josipović and first-round runner-up Milan Bandić was held on Sunday, January 10, 2010. Ivo Josipović won a landslide victory receiving 60.3% of the vote becoming the first elected president nominated by the Social Democratic Party of Croatia (SDP). The incumbent president Stjepan Mesić, who had been elected in the 2000 election as the candidate of the Croatian People's Party and re-elected in 2005 as an independent, was ineligible to seek re-election to a third term due to term limits.

As the incumbent was ineligible for re-election, many candidates took the opportunity to vie for position of the head of state (the highest political office in the country, although in Croatia, a parliamentary republic, the role of president is largely ceremonial and the Prime Minister - Head of Government - wields most power). Most mainstream Croatian political parties participated in the election either by nominating a candidate or endorsing one, but major party official candidates alone did not dominate the campaign. The relatively low nomination threshold (ten thousand signatures in a country of four million voters), turmoil in the largest political party (Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ) due to the departure of long-time leader Ivo Sanader and the ongoing economic crisis, as well as a significant one-man revolt in the second-largest party (Social Democratic Party of Croatia, SDP), caused the first round of this election to field the largest number of candidates so far.

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