Early parliamentary elections were held in North Macedonia on 15 July 2020. They had originally been scheduled for November 2020, but Prime MinisterZoran Zaev called early elections after the European Council failed to come to an agreement on starting talks with North Macedonia on joining the European Union in October 2019. The election date was set for 12 April, but was postponed until July due to the COVID-19 pandemic in North Macedonia.
Background
On 17 October 2019 the European Council did not give North Macedonia and Albania a date to start European Union membership negotiations, after it was opposed by French President Emmanuel Macron. The rejection was seen as a blow to Prime Minister Zoran Zaev's government in North Macedonia. Previously, in February 2019 the country formally changed its name from Macedonia to North Macedonia to resolve a longstanding dispute with Greece that blocked it from joining the European Union and NATO, after high level talks between Prime Minister Zaev and his Greek counterpart Alexis Tsipras throughout 2018 led to the Prespa Agreement signed on 17 June 2018. In May 2019 the candidate from Zaev's SDSM party, Stevo Pendarovski, won in the presidential election in a run off vote. In response to the European Council's decision, it was announced by Zaev that early parliamentary elections would be held on 12 April 2020. The date was chosen because it was expected North Macedonia would be a full member of NATO by then. On 27 March 2020, North Macedonia officially joined NATO.
Electoral system
Of the 123 seats in the Assembly of the Republic, 120 are elected from six 20-seat constituencies in North Macedonia using closed list proportional representation, with seats allocated using the d'Hondt method. The remaining three seats are elected by Macedonians living abroad, but are only filled if the number of votes exceeds that of the elected candidate with the fewest votes in North Macedonia in the previous election. If a list crosses this threshold, it wins one seat; to win two seats, a list needs to win twice the number of votes, and to win three seats the threshold is three times the number of votes. These seats were not filled in the 2016 elections due to insufficient turnout.
Campaign
Both Zaev's Social Democratic Union of Macedonia and the nationalist opposition VMRO-DPMNE, which opposes the name change to North Macedonia, began campaigning by early October 2019 as it seemed there would be a snap election. The SDSM campaign emphasised the party's role in the country's Euro-Atlantic integration, including resolving the dispute with Greece and securing NATO membership. The VMRO-DPMNE campaign opposes the name change and accused the government of corruption. On 19 February, the Alliance for Albanians and Alternativa announced an electoral coalition.
Special provisions were made for 700 people who contracted COVID-19 or were in quarantine. Measures were taken to ensure that the elderly and prison inmates vote early to avoid potential exposure to the virus. The head of the election commission, Oliver Derkoski, commented that the voting day passed calmly and only sporadic instances of irregularities were reported. Local electoral observation missions also expressed satisfaction at the conduct of the polls. Ljupco Nikolovski, the secretary-general of SDSM, commended the polls, saying "Today we had a calm, dignifying, and from health perspective, a safe day." A local observation mission criticized the lack of adequate mechanism for the disabled to vote. However, the opposition Alliance for Albanians and Alternativa movements, both upholding the interests of the ethnic Albanian minority, accused the BDI and SDSM of committing fraud to win. North Macedonia's public prosecution also received multiple complaints on election day. VMRO-DPMNE vice president Vladimir Misajlovski said that the results of the elections did not reflect the reality on ground. He blamed bribery of voters and abuse of institutions by the SDSM party to secure re-election. When vote counting began, the electoral commission's website was down for one hour. Derkoski said that it was probably due to external hacker attacks, but did not hamper actual vote counting. The unofficial results page also went down several times on and following election night. International observers described the elections as "well-managed". OSCE said that the elections were generally well-run and candidates could campaign freely, but legal stability was undermined by significant changes to electoral framework. They said that the authorities need to address the issues before next elections. According to OSCE, election day went smoothly, but challenges with voter registration remained. Media coverage also lacked critical assessment of party platforms.
Opinion polls
Results
The election resulted in an extremely divided parliament, with the pro-EU SDSM-led coalition winning a plurality of votes and seats. The nationalist conservative VMRO-DPMNE-led coalition came as a close second, lagging behind by only two seats and less than 1.5% of the vote. The BDI and the Alliance for Albanians–Alternativa coalition, both representing the ethnic Albanian minority, saw large gains. The Left, a socialist party, entered parliament for the first time with two seats, and the Democratic Party of Albanians lost one seat. Turnout was down roughly 15 percentage points mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Aftermath
A coalition will need to be formed as neither of the two largest parties hold enough seats to form a majority on their own, and mathematically, any coalition will have to include at least one of the two largest Albanian minority parties. The BDI made its participation in any coalition contingent on the nominee for Prime Minister being an ethnic Albanian, which both the SDSM and VMRO-DPMNE have refused. The BDI also had increased tensions with both the SDSM and the Alliance for Albanians coalition prior to and during the election, accusing the former of splitting the Albanian vote by allying with the Besa Movement, and being accused by the latter of committing fraud.
