The Croatian left demonstrated last Saturday against what it has united for and felt for the first time that it might win the elections. Therefore, the events following that protest carry greater political weight, primarily in the context of the relationship between the SDP and Možemo!, and it is no longer just their mutual competition for achieving better party results and leading the opposition but also a question of possible governance of the state. And for that, an agreement on Peđa Grbin or Sandra Benčić as a prime ministerial candidate is not enough. Before that, a common programmatic pre-election architecture needs to be created, perhaps even two complementary ones – if a decision is made to run in two blocks. After all, that was the case on January 3, 2000, when the ruling six was formed from the ‘main’ coalition between the SDP and HSLS, joined by a smaller block of four parties.
Turudić’s election as the chief state attorney could have been a one-time trigger for the protest gathering, but it will not be sufficient for electoral victory. After all, the Croatian KKK (crime, corruption, and clientelism), despite a series of scandals – each more unpleasant than the last – throughout Plenković’s mandate has not jeopardized the HDZ’s rating. That party has a solid and disciplined electoral base and increasingly flirts with the radical right, so the results of the left largely depend on how well they can mobilize their voters. Indeed, the SDP has achieved two victories with partners during moments of HDZ weakness – after Tuđman’s death and the ruthless intra-party battle for succession, and after the arrest of the former party leader and prime minister Sanader. Thus, programmatic mobilization of opposition voters in these elections is crucial.
How to win over 445,000 young people?
And what can ‘salon leftists’ do to get them to the polls? Turudić’s dismissal should be taken for granted. The same goes for significant changes in the management of state and public institutions and companies, but not through a system of revenge and nepotism, but by opening space for independent experts who will be closest to fulfilling clearly set KPIs with their development programs. However, these are just obligatory figures. First and foremost, the target group should be the youngest generation of voters, those who vote the least, and who filled Markov trg and all upper town approaches in large numbers. According to DZS data, more than 445,000 residents aged 16 to 26 lived in Croatia in mid-2022. This is a corpus that will have the right to vote in these elections, which is larger than the total number of members of all parties. Who will win them over? First, it is necessary to know what the preferences of that generation are.
According to the ‘Youth Research in Croatia 2018/2019’ by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (Anja Gvozdanović, Vlasta Ilišin, Mirjana Adamović, Dunja Potočnik, Nikola Baketa, Marko Kovačić), young people encounter various structural barriers during their upbringing, where success on that path often depends more on family support and resources, and less on socially created opportunities for an unobstructed transition from youth to adulthood. As many as 71 percent of the 1,500 respondents aged 14 to 29 live in their parental home. Eurostat data also indicate that young people in Croatia typically gain independence only after the age of 33.4, which is the oldest age in the European Union. It is evident that all APN loans have not changed this much, except that they have contributed to the increase in the price per square meter of apartments. Therefore, presenting an effective model of affordable rental housing for this population could resonate well.
