Cities are the most significant part of the local elections held on Sunday. Logically – they manage the largest budgets, thus perceiving the power of local leaders. Naturally, the most desirable ‘prey’ are large cities, foremost Zagreb with a budget for 2025 of nearly three billion euros. Here, the situation is certain – the incumbent mayor will surely confirm a significant advantage in the second round, and as Možemo! with the assistance of SDP will maintain a comfortable majority in the City Assembly, decision-making will be calm within that coalition.
We analyzed the results of the two largest parties, although it should be noted that we did not take into account that in some cities mayors will not have a majority in city councils and will be forced to compromise with other political options.
As usual, HDZ performed poorly in Zagreb, but this is not surprising. No one even remembers when that party had a strong candidate. This is logical since any potential winner in the Zagreb elections would immediately be a rival to the party leader or at least a logical aspirant for his position.
However, excluding Zagreb and Rijeka, HDZ confirmed its dominance on the political scene in the local elections on Sunday. In the first round of elections, they won – independently or with partners – mayoral positions in 42 cities. Their candidates enter the second round as favorites (with the highest number of votes in the first round) in 20 cities, and in another 16 cities, they have a chance to overturn the initial results and win.
SDP will not mourn Rijeka
Thus, HDZ mayors will control 1.63 billion in budgets, with good prospects of capturing the largest share of 990 million in 20 cities where their candidates are leading after the second round. The possibility of winning in some of the remaining 16 cities where they enter the second round as outsiders is somewhat lower. This party can be particularly satisfied with the result in Sisak, where they won power (and control of a budget of 141 million euros) from SDP, and that in the first round.
The ten largest cities with HDZ mayors elected in the first round have a total budget of 914 million euros. These are Osijek, Velika Gorica, Sisak, Vinkovci, Petrinja, Virovitica, Zaprešić, Kaštela, Novska, and Novi Marof.
