The results of the parliamentary election on 17 April show that the total number of votes received by a party is not always proportional to the number of seats won. This is illustrated by the fact that the Mozemo party received around 23,000 votes more than the Most party and one seat less, as well as a similar case concerning Fokus and the Independent Platform North.

The results from almost all polling stations show that Mozemo won slightly more than 193,000 votes and 10 parliamentary seats, while Most won 170,000 votes and 11 seats in the 11th Croatian Parliament.

The Domovinski pokret party received about 9,600 more votes than Mozemo! and even three more seats – 14.

The situation is similar for Fokus and Republika, which competed in a coalition and won one seat with around 47,700 votes, while the Independent Platform North won two seats with around 25,800 votes.

“If the whole of Croatia were a single constituency, this would not happen”

Goran Cular, professor at the Zagreb Faculty of Political Science, says that this is not unusual or unexpected in an electoral system like the Croatian one with ten constituencies. The number of seats won depends on how the votes won are distributed and divided, he said.

Mozemo, for example, received a large number of votes in constituencies where it did not pass the electoral threshold, or in constituencies where it did pass the electoral threshold (constituencies 4 and 10) but did not win a seat, and these votes can be seen in the total number of votes.

“This shows that the Most and Domovinski pokret parties cover Croatia better and more evenly than Mozemo, which is centred on Zagreb,” said Cular.

If the whole of Croatia was a single constituency, something like this would not happen, and if it was divided into four to five constituencies, such situations would not occur as easily as they do now, he said.

Similar situations have also occurred in previous elections, Cular said, recalling the case of the Croatian Pensioners’ Party, which won one parliamentary seat with 100,000 votes in one election and three seats with the same number of votes in another.