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Mayoral election | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Turnout | 47.14% (first round)[1] 6.00 pp 45.07% (runoff)[2] 3.93 pp | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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All 47 seats in the Zagreb Assembly 24 seats needed for a majority | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.
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Elections were held in Zagreb on 16 May 2021 for the 53rd mayor of Zagreb, the two deputy mayors, the 47 members of the Zagreb Assembly, the councils of districts and the local committees, as part of the 2021 Croatian local elections.[3] The runoff for the mayor took place on 30 May 2021.
As Zagreb, being the national capital, is the only Croatian city to enjoy a special status within Croatia's regional administrative framework (being both a city and a county), the mayor of Zagreb likewise also enjoys a status equal to that of a county prefect (Croatian: župan) of one of Croatia's other 20 counties (Croatian: županija). The city's county-level status is also highlighted in the name of its legislature, which is uniquely styled as a city assembly (Croatian: skupština; a term reserved for units with regional self-government, i.e. counties), and not as a city council (Croatian: vijeće; which is used for units with local self-government, i.e. cities and municipalities).
The elections followed in the wake of the late February death of long-time Zagreb mayor Milan Bandić. Since the start of the campaign, and especially in May 2021, polling for mayor had consistently placed left-wing social activist and environmental researcher, Tomislav Tomašević, clearly in the lead, with 30–40 percent of the vote (as was also the case with his Green–Left Coalition in the Assembly election). Meanwhile, the candidates of Croatia's two major parties – the HDZ and the SDP, were well behind, as were conservative musician-turned-politician Miroslav Škoro, acting mayor Jelena Pavičić Vukičević and former Minister of Justice Vesna Škare-Ožbolt.[4][5][6] In the week leading up to the election, several candidates filed charges against one of the polling agencies, Akter Public, accusing it of influencing public opinion to benefit Miroslav Škoro over several other candidates.[7][8][9][10][11] Akter Public issued a denial, while Škoro's Homeland Movement admitted that it had engaged in business transactions with Akter Public.[12]
The first round of the mayoral election, held on 16 May 2021, was convincingly won by leftist candidate Tomislav Tomašević (with 45.15%), while right-wing nationalist Miroslav Škoro finished a distant second (with 12.16%). Furthermore, Tomašević's number of votes is the highest of any first round candidate since the introduction of direct mayoral elections in 2009.[13] However, as no candidate received a majority of the votes, a run-off took place on 30 May 2021.[14] Tomašević was elected mayor with 63.87% of the vote, against Škoro's 34.01%.[15] In addition, just as was the case in the first round, Tomašević's second round performance once more set a new record for the number of votes received by a mayor candidate in Zagreb. Namely, his almost 200 thousand votes was larger by nearly 30,000 than that which Milan Bandić received in the second round of the 2013 election.[16][17]
Meanwhile, in the Assembly election, the Green–Left Coalition won 23 of out the 47 seats (thus falling just one seat short of an overall majority), and later entered into a coalition with the centre-left Social Democratic Party, which won 5 seats.[18][19]