Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Central Election Commission has published preliminary results from the general election: with 80% of votes counted, Denis Bećirović, Darijana Filipović and Željka Cvijanović are leading the races for the three seats on the tripartite presidency. The commission released the vote totals for the leading candidates in each of the three contests. The results remain preliminary: not all ballots have been counted.
Race for the Bosniak seat
In the race for the presidency seat representing Bosniaks, Bećirović received 164,369 votes. He is followed by Bakir Izetbegović with 148,036 and Semir Efendić with 110,530 votes; Fahrudin Radončić received 9,320.
Bećirović’s current lead over Izetbegović is 16,333 votes. However, this comparison is based on the ballots counted so far: the published figures reflect 80% of votes counted and do not, by themselves, indicate the final allocation of seats.
Candidates representing Croats
Darijana Filipović is provisionally leading the race for the Croat seat, with 92,854 votes. Slaven Kovačević has 55,475 votes, and Zdenko Lučić has 44,345.
At this stage of the published count, Filipović’s lead over Kovačević is 37,379 votes. These figures show the candidates’ standing in a separate contest for one of the three seats on the presidency, not an overall ranking for the entire country.
Results in the Serb race
Željka Cvijanović, deputy leader of the ruling SNSD party in Republika Srpska, is leading the race for the Serb seat, with 213,812 votes. Marinko Božović received 102,877, while Nebojša Vukanović received 67,707.
According to the published figures, Cvijanović’s lead over Božović is 110,935 votes. Republika Srpska is an entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina; these results relate specifically to the election of the Serb representative to the tripartite presidency.
What the commission has published
The published results provide three separate vote counts—for candidates seeking the Bosniak, Croat and Serb seats. Each race lists the candidates and the votes they received; the overall share of votes counted is given as 80%.
Thus, the commission’s announcement makes it possible to compare the candidates’ current standings and their margins, but does not include a full count of all votes. While the results remain preliminary, the figures should be viewed as a snapshot of the count so far, not as final confirmation of the winners.
Political context and expectations
Before the vote, Yakov Smirnov, a researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Slavic Studies, told Vedomosti that the election was accompanied by considerable speculation both within Bosnia and Herzegovina and abroad. He also noted that no major political surprises were expected from the election results.
The preliminary count identifies the leaders in all three races, but the figures still exclude one-fifth of the votes. The main practical takeaway from the announcement, therefore, is not the final makeup of the presidency, but how votes are distributed with 80% of ballots counted.
Key takeaway: With 80% of votes counted, Bećirović, Filipović and Cvijanović are leading, but the published results are still preliminary.
Sources
- cik.bg — “Central Election Commission”
- rbc.ru — “Election Commission announces preliminary results of State Duma election. Video”
- rbc.ru — “Election Commission approves results of State Duma election”
