Presidential elections were held in
Croatia
Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...
in January 2005, the fourth such elections since independence in 1991. They were the first presidential elections held after the constitutional reforms of November 2000, which replaced a
semi-presidential system with an incomplete
parliamentary system
A parliamentary system, or parliamentary democracy, is a form of government where the head of government (chief executive) derives their Election, democratic legitimacy from their ability to command the support ("confidence") of a majority of t ...
, greatly reducing the powers of the president in favor of the
Prime Minister
A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but r ...
and the cabinet. Incumbent president
Stjepan Mesić, who had been elected in
2000 as the candidate of the
Croatian People's Party, was eligible to seek reelection to a second term and ran as an independent as the
constitution
A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed.
When these pri ...
prohibited the president from holding party membership while in office.
The elections resulted in the landslide re-election of Mesić for a second five-year term. They were also the first in which a woman,
Croatian Democratic Union candidate
Jadranka Kosor, took part in the runoff. The percentage of the vote received by Mesić in the second round – 66% – was the highest of any president until
Zoran Milanović's victory in 2025. Mesić had received an absolute majority of the votes cast within Croatia itself in the first round, but the votes of Croatian citizens living abroad forced a run-off by reducing Mesić's overall percentage to just under the necessary 50% + 1 vote threshold needed to win in the first round. Voter turnout was 51% in both rounds.
Mesić was sworn in for a second term on 18 February 2005 by the Chief justice of the Constitutional Court.
Background
The Croatian State Elections Committee published a list of potential candidates on 15 December 2004. President
Stjepan Mesić stood for re-election, and the governing
HDZ nominated cabinet minister
Jadranka Kosor. A total of thirteen candidates were accepted, each after having submitted 10,000 citizen signatures, an endorsement required by law.
Results
Analysis
Most polls before the first round predicted that incumbent president
Stjepan Mesić would be reelected without a runoff, securing
50% + 1 vote. However,
Jadranka Kosor benefited from the votes coming from the citizens living abroad, which narrowed the president's victory by only a couple of points, but enough to secure a second round. The greatest surprise of the election was the independent candidate
Boris Mikšić, a Croatian businessman and entrepreneur living in the United States. His campaign was heavily based on the message of a 'Croatian dream', similar to the
American dream he said he achieved during his career in the US. On the night of the election, the first exit polls indicated president Mesić might secure a second term without the need of a runoff, while Kosor and Mikšić were shown battling for second place. As the first results started coming in it was evident that Mesić was not going to secure 50% + 1 vote and that a runoff is inevitable. As votes from the citizens living abroad were tallied, Kosor overtook Mikšić, placing second and qualifying for the second round. The campaign began immediately the next day and during the two-week-long campaign, three presidential debates were held, one on each of Croatia's three major
television networks. Despite most observers and post debate polls indicating Kosor won the debates, Mesić maintained his lead in the polls. As Election Day neared, the Kosor campaign exceeded all previous campaign spending records, trying to motivate the conservative base. On Election Day, as polls around the country closed at 7 pm, all television networks announced Mesić won a landslide victory based on the exit polls, which official results later confirmed. Kosor conceded and congratulated Mesić on his victory. After the elections, Boris Mikšić claimed the elections were fraud and that Mesić and Prime Minister
Ivo Sanader made a deal of "bringing" Kosor in the second round. He claimed to have received 15,000 election ballots with serial numbers that were not evidented.
References
External links
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{{Croatian_elections
Presidential elections in Croatia
Croatia
Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...
Presidential
Croatia
Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...
President
Modern history of Croatia