Following the 2016 parliamentary elections, the entire opposition started a collective boycott of all parliamentary sittings. In January 2017, 39 of the 81 MPs were boycotting parliament, requesting early elections be held no later than 2018, when the next presidential elections were scheduled. Protests against corruption in the DPS-led government started in February 2019 after the revelation of footage and documents that appeared to implicate top officials in obtaining funds for the ruling party. On 30 March, all 39 opposition MPs signed an "Agreement for the Future", proposed by the protest organizers, in which they promised to boycott the 2020 elections if they were deemed irregular. In May 2020 the protest organizers called for a boycott of the 30 August elections, along with some opposition parties, claiming that the elections would not be held under fair conditions. The EU-backed board for electoral system reform, which both the government and the opposition participated in, failed in December 2019, after the opposition left the board sessions in the protest at the government passing a controversial law on religion, accusing the ruling party of inciting ethnic hatred and unrest. In late December 2019 another wave of protest started against the newly adopted law which de jure transfers the ownership of church buildings and estates from the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro to the Montenegrin state. In its political rights and civil liberties worldwide report in May 2020, Freedom House marked Montenegro as a hybrid regime rather than a democracy because of declining standards in governance, justice, elections and media freedom. Freedom House stated that years of increasing state capture, abuse of power and strongman tactics employed by long-term Prime Minister and President Milo Đukanović had tipped country over the edge, and for the first time since 2003, Montenegro was no longer categorised as a democracy. The report emphasised the unequal electoral process, cases of political arrests, negative developments related to judicial independence, media freedoms, as well as a series of unresolved cases of corruption within the DPS-led government.
Electoral system
The 81 seats of the Parliament of Montenegro are elected in a single nationwide constituency using closed list proportional representation. Seats are allocated using the d'Hondt method with a 3% electoral threshold. However, minority groups that account for at least 15% of the population in a district are given an exemption that lowers the electoral threshold to 0.7%. A separate exemption is given to ethnic Croats whereby if no list representing the population passes the 0.7% threshold, the list with the most votes will win one seat if it receives more than 0.35% of the vote.
Poll results are listed in the table below in reverse chronological order, showing the most recent first, and using the date the survey's fieldwork was done, as opposed to the date of publication. If such date is unknown, the date of publication is given instead. The highest percentage figure in each polling survey is displayed in bold, and the background shaded in the leading party's colour. In the instance that there is a tie, then no figure is shaded. The lead column on the right shows the percentage-point difference between the two parties with the highest figures. When a specific poll does not show a data figure for a party, the party's cell corresponding to that poll is shown empty. The threshold for a party to elect members is 3%. – denotes the poll was commissioned by a political party/coalition.
