Skopje, 24 April 2024 (MIA) - Preliminary results from the State Election Commission's website reveal that, with 80 percent of votes counted from 2,806 out of 3,508 polling stations, VMRO-DPMNE candidate Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova is currently in the lead with 282,075 votes (39.82%) ahead of SDSM’s Stevo Pendarovski with 137,450 votes (19.42%).

DUI’s Bujar Osmani is third with 101,160 votes (14.28%), followed by Arben Taravari from the Worth It coalition with 71,633 votes (10.11%). ZNAM’s Dimitrievski has 59,933 votes (8.46%), Levica’s Vankovska has 30,802 votes (4.35%), and GROM’s Stevcho Jakimovski has 5,321 votes (0.75%).

Polling stations were open from 7:00 am until 7:00 pm. A total of 1,814,317 citizens are eligible to vote at the April 24 presidential elections. Across 3,480 polling stations, voters could cast their votes for one of the seven candidates.

The State Election Commission (SEC) will release the voting results successively, as it receives them from the polling stations.

The SEC is set to release the final election results within the next 24 hours following the conclusion of the voting process.

The voter turnout in today's presidential elections until 6:00 pm reached 47.61%, which surpasses the turnout of the last presidential elections in 2019, where by 7:00 pm, 41.67% of registered voters had cast their votes.

The candidate who garners more than 50 percent of votes from the registered voters, i.e. 907,159 votes, is elected president in the first round. Otherwise, a run-off is held in a fortnight, including the two candidates who received most votes in the first round.

Photo: print screen