As many as 70,000 eligible voters will be outside Croatia on their skiing holidays on 5 January when the country holds a presidential runoff and only 5,095 of them have registered themselves for voting outside their place of residence, the Jutarnji List daily said in its issue on Thursday.

The data about the number of Croatian skiers outside the country on 5 January was collected from travel agencies that organise winter travel arrangements. They show that about 110,000 Croatians could be on their skiing holidays next weekend, and of them a third are underage children who cannot vote in elections, which means that 70,000-80,000 are eligible voters.

The Public Administration Ministry and the State Election Commission (DIP) say that 5,095 voters have requested a certificate for voting outside the place of permanent residence.

The data was used by the daily to estimate how many skiers are likely to “abstain” from voting in the second round of the presidential elections in which the incumbent president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic seeks her reelection and her rival is former Prime Minister and Social Democrat leader Zoran Milanovic.

Thus, the daily newspaper concludes that a rough calculation suggests that 65,000 Croatians will not go to polling stations because of their winter holidays.

The daily recalls that five years ago when a runoff included the then incumbent president Ivo Josipovic (SDP) and Grabar Kitarovic as the contender, also 4,876 voters had been given certificates for voting outside their place of residence.

During the 11 January 2015 runoff, Kitarovic garnered 50.74% of the vote, that is 1,114,945 ballots, while her predecessor Josipovic won 49.26% (1,082,436 ballots), which means that she won 32,509 votes more than Josipovic.

Therefore it is no wonder that since the start of the election campaign, Milanovic has been complaining about the dates for the presidential election process, as he believes that the absence of that portion of the electorate could impact the final result in the probably cliffhanger presidential election runoff.