| |||||||||||||||||||
63 out 68 seats to the Chamber of Counties | |||||||||||||||||||
Turnout | 64.3% | ||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||
|
Chamber of Counties elections were held for the first time in Croatia on 7 February 1993. [1] The result was a victory for the Croatian Democratic Union, which won 37 of the 63 elected seats.
Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, on the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro to the southeast, sharing a maritime border with Italy. Its capital, Zagreb, forms one of the country's primary subdivisions, along with twenty counties. Croatia has an area of 56,594 square kilometres and a population of 4.28 million, most of whom are Roman Catholics.
The Croatian Democratic Union is a conservative political party and the main centre-right political party in Croatia. It is one of the two major contemporary political parties in Croatia, along with the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SDP). It is currently the largest party in the Sabor with 55 seats. The HDZ ruled Croatia from 1990 after the country gained independence from Yugoslavia until 2000 and, in coalition with junior partners, from 2003 to 2011, and since 2016. The party is a member of the European People's Party (EPP). HDZ's leader, Andrej Plenković, is the current Prime Minister of Croatia, having taken office following the 2016 Parliamentary Election.
Under the new constitution adopted in 1990, the Croatian Parliament was bicameral. The lower house had been elected in 1992 and its representatives had passed laws creating new territorial organisations of Croatia. This included counties that were to be represented by the upper house – the Chamber of Counties.
The Croatian Parliament or the Sabor is the unicameral representative body of the citizens of the Republic of Croatia; it is Croatia's legislature. Under the terms of the Croatian Constitution, the Sabor represents the people and is vested with legislative power. The Sabor is composed of 151 members elected to a four-year term on the basis of direct, universal and equal suffrage by secret ballot. Seats are allocated according to the Croatian Parliament electoral districts: 140 members of the parliament are elected in multi-seat constituencies, 8 from the minorities and 3 from the Croatian diaspora. The Sabor is presided over by a Speaker, who is assisted by at least one deputy speaker.
Each county elected three members, while the President had the right to appoint five members, known as "Virils". [2] The electoral law made each county a district that was to elect three representatives on the basis of proportional representation.
Proportional representation (PR) characterizes electoral systems in which divisions in an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. If n% of the electorate support a particular political party, then roughly n% of seats will be won by that party. The essence of such systems is that all votes contribute to the result - not just a plurality, or a bare majority. The most prevalent forms of proportional representation all require the use of multiple-member voting districts, as it is not possible to fill a single seat in a proportional manner. In fact, the implementations of PR that achieve the highest levels of proportionality tend to include districts with large numbers of seats.
In practice, the use of proportional representation in such small districts led to a single party – the Croatian Democratic Union – being grossly overrepresented because sometimes even with less than third of the votes guaranteed two of the three seats.
The elections were marked by an uncharacteristically intense campaign directed towards single region – Istria. Government of Franjo Tuđman has invested great effort to defeat the Istrian Democratic Assembly, concerned about party's good result during 1992 elections. This effort backfired, resulting in record vote for the IDS.
Istria, formerly Histria (Latin), Ίστρια, is the largest peninsula in the Adriatic Sea. The peninsula is located at the head of the Adriatic between the Gulf of Trieste and the Kvarner Gulf. It is shared by three countries: Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy. Croatia encapsulates most of the Istrian peninsula with its Istria County.
Franjo Tuđman, also written as Franjo Tudjman, was a Croatian politician and historian. Following the country's independence from Yugoslavia he became the first President of Croatia and served as president from 1990 until his death in 1999. He was the 9th and last President of the Presidency of SR Croatia from May to July 1990.
The Istrian Democratic Assembly is a centre-left, regionalist, liberal political party in Croatia primarily operating in Istria County.
Party | Votes | % | Seats |
---|---|---|---|
Croatian Democratic Union | 1,013,365 | 45.5 | 37 |
Croatian Social Liberal Party | 486,210 | 21.8 | 16 |
Croatian Peasant Party | 258,953 | 11.6 | 5 |
Istrian Democratic Assembly | 76,273 | 3.4 | 3 |
HSLS-HNS | 45,657 | 2.0 | – |
Party of Democratic Changes | 41,955 | 1.9 | 1 |
HSLS-HNS-SDP | 35,937 | 1.6 | – |
HSLS-HNS-HKDU-SDP | 33,246 | 1.5 | – |
Croatian Christian Democratic Union | 27,584 | 1.2 | 0 |
Dalmatian Action | 26,303 | 1.2 | 0 |
RDS-IDS | 22,801 | 1.0 | – |
HSLS-SDP | 21,478 | 1.0 | – |
SDP-HSS | 18,312 | 0.8 | – |
Social Democratic Union | 17,413 | 0.8 | 0 |
Croatian People's Party | 15,363 | 0.7 | 1 |
Other parties | 64,351 | 2.9 | 0 |
Independents | 22,562 | 1.01 | 0 |
Appointed members | – | – | 5 |
Invalid/blank votes | 76,019 | – | – |
Total | 2,303,782 | 100 | 68 |
Registered voters | 3,580,396 | 64.3 | – |
Sources: Nohlen & Stöver, Official results [3] |
General elections were held in the Netherlands on 3 July 1918. They were the first elections held after a series of reforms that introduced universal male suffrage and pure proportional representation, replacing the previous system using first-past-the-post voting in single member constituencies. This change was known as the Great Pacification, which also included the introduction of state financing of religious schools, and led to the start of consociational democracy.
Regular elections in Croatia are mandated by the Constitution and legislation enacted by Parliament. The presidency, Parliament, county prefects and assemblies, city and town mayors, and city and municipal councils are all elective offices. Since 1990, five presidential elections have been held. During the same period, nine parliamentary elections were also held. In addition, there were six nationwide local elections. Croatia has held two elections to elect 11 members of the European Parliament following its accession to the EU on 1 July 2013.
Bulgaria elects on national level a head of state - the president - and a legislature. The president is elected for a five-year term directly by the people. The National Assembly has 240 members, elected for a four-year term by proportional representation in multi-seat constituencies with a 4% threshold. Bulgaria has a multi-party system, in which no one party often has a chance of gaining power alone, and parties must work with each to form governments.
Parliamentary elections were held alongside presidential elections in Croatia on 2 August 1992, the first after independence and under the new constitution. All 138 seats in the Chamber of Representatives were up for election. The result was a victory for the Croatian Democratic Union, which won an absolute majority of 85 seats. Voter turnout was 75.6%.
Parliamentary elections were held in Croatia on 29 October 1995 to elect the 127 members of the Chamber of Representatives. The result was a victory for the Croatian Democratic Union, which won 75 seats, an absolute majority. Therefore, this was the last election to date in which a single party won enough seats to govern alone, without the need for parliamentary support from pre-election or post-election coalition partners. Voter turnout was 68.8%.
The House of Representatives, is one of the two chambers of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the other being the House of Peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The chamber consists of 42 members which are elected by party-list proportional representation. 28 members are elected from the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH), and 14 from the Republika Srpska (RS). Members serve for terms of four years. The current membership of the chamber was elected on 7 October 2018.
Parliamentary elections were held in Macedonia on 18 October 1998, with a second round on 1 November. VMRO-DPMNE emerged as the largest party, winning 49 of the 120 seats, and later formed a coalition government with Democratic Alternative and the Democratic Party of Albanians.
Parliamentary elections were held in Hungary on 9 April 2006, with a second round of voting in 110 of the 176 single-member constituencies on 23 April. The Hungarian Socialist Party emerged as the largest party in the National Assembly with 186 of the 386 seats, and continued the coalition government with the Alliance of Free Democrats. It marked the first time a government had been re-elected since the end of Communist rule.
Parliamentary elections were held in Macedonia on 15 September 2002. The result was a victory for the Together for Macedonia, an alliance of the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia, the Liberal Democratic Party, the Democratic Party of Turks, the Democratic League of Bosniaks, the United Party of Romas in Macedonia, the Democratic Party of Serbs, the Democratic Union of Vlachs, the Workers-Peasant Party, the Socialist Christian Party of Macedonia and the Green Party of Macedonia, which won 60 of the 120 seats in the Assembly.
Legislative elections were held in Romania on 30 November 2008. The Democratic Liberal Party (PDL) won most seats in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, although the alliance headed by the Social Democratic Party (PSD) won a fractionally higher vote share. The two parties subsequently formed a governing coalition with Emil Boc of the PDL as Prime Minister.
General elections were held in Italy on Sunday, 2 June 1946. They were the first after World War II and elected 556 deputies to the Constituent Assembly. Theoretically, a total of 573 deputies were to be elected, but the election did not take place in the Julian March and in South Tyrol, which were under military occupation by the United Nations.
General elections were held in Romania in December 1937. The Chamber of Deputies was elected on 20 December, whilst the Senate was elected in three stages on 22, 28 and 30 December. The National Liberal Party remained the largest party, winning 152 of the 387 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 97 of the 112 seats in the Senate elected by universal male vote, although it lost its majority in the Chamber. The party's unexpectedly poor showing meant they could not form a coalition with either their arch-rivals the National Peasants' Party or with the Iron Guard's Everything for the Country Party, King Carol II invited the poet Octavian Goga to form a government, despite the fact that his National Christian Party finished fourth and had an avowedly anti-Semitic platform.
Parliamentary elections were held in Russia on 12 December 1993. They included the last elections to the Federation Council of Russia.
General elections were held in Belgium on 16 November 1919. Although the Belgian Labour Party received the most votes in the Chamber of Representatives elections, the Catholic Party remained the largest party in both the Chamber and the Senate. Voter turnout was 88.5% in the Chamber elections.
Constitutional Assembly elections were held in Bulgaria on 10 June 1990, with a second round for eighteen seats on 17 June. They were the first elections held since the fall of Communism the previous winter, and the first free national elections since 1931. The elections were held to elect the 7th Grand National Assembly, tasked with adopting a new (democratic) constitution. The new electoral system was changed from 400 single-member constituencies used during the Communist era to a split system whereby half were elected in single member constituencies and half by proportional representation. The result was a victory for the Bulgarian Socialist Party, the freshly renamed Communist Party, which won 211 of the 400 seats. Voter turnout was 90.3%.
Early parliamentary elections were held in Moldova on 27 February 1994. They were the country's first competitive elections, and followed deadlock in Parliament over the issue of joining the Commonwealth of Independent States. The result was a victory for the Democratic Agrarian Party of Moldova, which won 56 of the 104 seats.
General elections were held in Venezuela on 5 December 1993. The presidential elections were won by Rafael Caldera of National Convergence, who received 30.5% of the vote. Democratic Action remained the largest party in the Chamber of Deputies and Senate, which were elected on separate ballots for the first time. Voter turnout was 60.2%, the lowest since World War II.
Full general elections were held in Belgium on 14 October 1894, with run-off elections held on 21 October 1894.
Full general elections were held in Belgium on 27 May 1900.
Parliamentary elections were held in Cyprus in 1960. The House of Representatives was elected on 31 July 1960, whilst the Communal Chambers were elected on 7 August. In the House of Representatives 35 seats were elected by Greek Cypriots and 15 by Turkish Cypriots. The result was a victory for the Patriotic Front, which won 30 of the 50 seats. In the Communal Chambers, the Patriotic Front won 20 of the 26 seats in the Greek Chamber, whilst the Cyprus Turkish National Union won all seats in the Turkish Chamber.