Five Key Trends in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s General Election

When election results for all levels of government appeared on news websites and television stations shortly after 8 pm on Sunday, 4 October – just over an hour after almost one and a half million people in Bosnia and Herzegovina had finished voting – it was clear that this election was unlike any before it.

Citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina are accustomed to receiving election-night results from political parties, with the first preliminary results from the official electoral body arriving only around midnight, and only for contests where counting proceeds quickly. Previously, they had to wait days, sometimes even weeks, for complete preliminary results. This time, thanks to new electoral technologies, it was clear by midnight who the winners and losers were and what future governments and parliaments might look like. Despite modern technology and transparency, the results took Bosnia and Herzegovina back to the coalitions of the past. Ethnonationalist parties won once again across the country.

These are the election’s five key trends and one reason for optimism.

What the Parties Offered

Some major parties, such as the SNSD (Alliance of Independent Social Democrats), made no effort to display their programme prominently on their websites. Others, such as Naša stranka (Our Party), created a dedicated platform for the 2026 general election, presenting their programme and candidates in detail. Most parties fell somewhere in between. Their websites featured brief programmes for 2026, but most focused on presenting candidates, usually through news items or social media posts.

What they emphasised in these posts and in speeches at rallies often overlapped only partly with their programmes. While programmes and promises focused on living standards and the economy, rally speeches and media statements frequently centred on division, fear and threats. Only one in six paid Facebook advertisements contained a concrete promise, and only one in eight included a deadline. Advertisements were used to boast about rallies, offer thanks, showcase achievements and attack others.

The SNSD had the poorest balance between substantive promises and voter mobilisation through populist statements. According to news items on the SNSD’s official website, party officials made little effort to offer promises until the very end of the campaign. Campaign meetings held by this party and United Srpska focused more on mobilisation through talk of stability and preserving the entity. In Vlasenica, Prime Minister Savo Minić spoke about the achievements of Milorad Dodik, the SNSD leader who was unable to stand because of a court-imposed ban on holding office. ‘Name one major country whose three officials visit Israel, America and Russia’, he said. In Šamac, Dodik himself invoked the capital city and the West. ‘We do not like Sarajevo, we do not like Britain, we do not like Germany, we do not like Schmidt’, he said.

Measurable economic promises appeared less frequently, alongside lists of achievements in the places where rallies were held. At the final rally in Banja Luka’s Borik Sports Hall, Dodik promised a ten per cent pay rise, a seven per cent pension increase and a ten per cent increase in the veterans’ allowance. During an appearance on ATV, he added a promise of an average salary of EUR 1,000.

The HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) offered even fewer concrete promises. In places where campaign meetings were held, the focus was on infrastructure construction, most often roads. According to the available news items on the party’s website and politicians’ speeches, they avoided making concrete promises about the economy and living standards. Reports suggest that the HDZ hardly missed an opportunity at its rallies to emphasise equality, legitimate representation and the Election Law. ‘We are asking for what is ours, what the Constitution entitles us to. That is not a privilege. Equality is the minimum requirement of democracy, and I promise we will secure it’, said HDZ vice-president and candidate for the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Darijana Filipović.

In more than 1,300 articles about the election campaign published by the ten domestic media outlets selected for this analysis, parties most frequently offered voters three types of messages: a better life, warnings of threats to the people or the state, and ethnic debates.

The SDP (Social Democratic Party) placed the promise of a minimum salary of BAM 1,500 and a pension of BAM 1,000 at the heart of its campaign, entitled ‘One State. One Team.’ NIP (People and Justice) focused on promises without specified amounts and on its achievements to date, highlighting universal child benefit, affordable housing for young people and clean air in Zenica-Doboj Canton. Its few measurable promises included 1,000 new police officers in Sarajevo Canton and membership of the EU and NATO for Bosnia and Herzegovina by 2036.

Naša stranka had one of the most developed green agendas and several verifiable figures but rarely used them in its advertisements. Most of the party’s messages opposed the politics of fear. A separate, detailed analysis of the use of fear during the election campaign is available at this link. NIP and Naša stranka were dissatisfied with their results compared with the previous election, largely because of voters’ assessments of their performance.

At his first election rally in Stolac, and on the SDA’s Facebook page, Bakir Izetbegović presented the ‘3 × 50’ programme: ‘My personal pledge is the 3 × 50 programme: BAM 50 billion in investment during this term, 50,000 new jobs, and salaries and pensions 50 per cent higher by the end of the term.’ He repeated this statement consistently at rallies and campaign meetings – at least 14 of the 21 covered on the SDA website.

Yet the SDA’s platform, one of the most detailed of any party, contains none of these figures and makes no mention of the ‘3 × 50’ programme. At the same time, it criticises the current government’s actions, stating that ‘raising the minimum salary by more than 60 per cent and pensions by 17 per cent without any supporting economic analysis or projections, in a purely populist move, created inflationary pressure’. It also sets out various ideas and measures – but without amounts and mostly without deadlines – including fewer parafiscal charges, a lower tax burden on labour, the digitalisation of procedures, industrial zones, and renewed efforts to join the European Union and NATO. In its policies on the judiciary and the country’s constitutional arrangements, the SDA reiterated its earlier positions. At campaign meetings, however, speakers consistently repeated that the priority was to adopt a law on proportional representation in institutions, with sanctions for non-compliance.

Rather than offering its own solutions for renewable energy and the green agenda more broadly, the SDA criticised the governing Troika coalition. Its goals for 2030 are a ‘significantly higher share of renewable energy sources’ and ‘greater energy independence’, but its concrete actions reiterate the need for increased household energy generation and energy storage. Although it calls for alignment with European directives, the SDA focuses on gas, which the European Union has already clearly stated cannot be the main basis for the transition to renewable energy. It also calls for the modernisation of mines but gives no deadline for a complete coal phase-out and names no thermal power plant in its plan. Meanwhile, news items on its official website make no mention of renewables, climate or pollution.

Alongside concrete promises, Demokratska fronta - DF (Democratic Front), Narod i pravda, NES (People’s European Union) and SDA frequently mentioned the war, veterans and aggression. The SDA warned of ‘the most difficult period’ for a ‘sinking state’, while the DF presented voters’ choice as a struggle of ‘anti-fascism against fascism’.

The SDP and Naša stranka were among the few parties to oppose ethnic divisions and the politics of fear directly, while opposition parties challenged divisions within the Republika Srpska, most prominently Draško Stanivuković.

The regional pattern in Bosnia and Herzegovina shows that the most general promises were made in areas where parties have held uncontested power for a long time, such as parts of the Republika Srpska where the SNSD regularly wins, or Herzegovina, where the HDZ does so. In Sarajevo and several other cities where governments have changed over the past decade and the SDA has not consistently won elections, promises were more concrete and focused more on living standards.

According to a report in Glas Srpske, Slavenko Ristić of the Republican Party of Srpska addressed this at a rally in a village near Bijeljina. ‘Most parties talk about someone attacking the Republika Srpska, about threats coming from one side or another, but no one talks about the essential things – what we will live on,’ he said. Opposition parties also spoke about salary increases, although their focus was on the SNSD’s ‘national betrayal’.

For the SDS (Serb Democratic Party), the focus was on ‘restoring justice to Srpska’. ‘Let us all work together to free the Republika Srpska from the terror of the current government, which does not serve the people,’ said Marinko Božović, the candidate for the Presidency who lost to Željka Cvijanović.

Draško Stanivuković and Pokret sigurna Srpska - PSS (Secure Srpska Movement) offered a ‘contract with the people’ – nine promises for the first hundred days in office. These included moving gambling establishments away from schools, abolishing VAT on medicines, improving veterans’ circumstances and similar measures, but no concrete criteria for tracking the fulfilment of these promises. The PSS was one of the few parties to take clear positions on the environment, opposing further mining on Mount Ozren and calling for amendments to the laws on concessions, mining and geological exploration. After the election, Stanivuković said that the number of votes it had received made the PSS the entity’s second-strongest party.

BH Zeleni (BH Greens), one of the few parties whose commitment to the green transition was reflected even in its name, offered concrete proposals with deadlines. It also specified the funding needed to implement the green transition and was among the few parties to mention the actual costs that the introduction of CBAM, a form of EU environmental levy, would impose on Bosnia and Herzegovina, and ways to address them. However, its billboards in Sarajevo did not reflect the promises in its programme and campaign. They did not emphasise its sole advantage over other parties. Instead, one billboard had a slogan that uses a wordplay to say ‘We’ve got balls! What about you?’ alongside a call to vote. According to the figures available at the time of writing, the party won just one seat in Tuzla Canton and failed to cross the electoral threshold elsewhere.

According to open data provided by Meta, at least BAM 670,000 was spent on Facebook advertising during this election. Naša stranka and the PSS spent the most, at more than BAM 50,000 each, followed by the SDA and United Srpska, or Nenad Stevandić, at BAM 40,000. Stanivuković, Jelena Trivić and the SNSD spent somewhat less.

The trend in this year’s election shows that the parties making the fewest concrete promises with deadlines, such as the SNSD, made the largest gains or received the most votes. By contrast, parties with clearly visible platforms containing concrete promises and deadlines lost votes.

The SDP was something of an exception to this trend, largely retaining its voter base by offering salary and pension increases in specific amounts.

What Was Not Discussed

Candidates made their promises of higher salaries and living standards in this election in a ‘vacuum’, without reference to global trends such as rising energy prices and climate change, which increasingly affect costs and reduce projected growth in economies that have not made the green transition, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina’s. The campaign made it seem as though the country were disconnected from global developments, untouched by events shaping realities elsewhere. Politicians did, however, compete to show who was allied with whom and who had better connections. Dodik and his SNSD highlighted their success in securing removal from the US sanctions list and their friendship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The HDZ did the same through its sister party in Croatia, while NIP leader and Foreign Minister Elmedin Konaković boasted about his meetings during his term in office.

The SNSD was one of the few parties with no doubts about aligning itself internationally with right-wing authoritarian parties and their representatives. Yet it offered no answer as to whether this orientation would be beneficial in the long term or what would happen if other political approaches gained support around the world. Questions about the impact of fuel prices on the domestic economy were almost entirely absent from the debate, as was the impact of climate change, which citizens experienced most clearly for the first time this summer through prolonged droughts and water shortages.

The campaign in the Federation failed to offer a clear path for positioning the country in a world currently marked by the war between the US and Iran, the war in Ukraine, shifting longstanding alliances and China’s growing influence on the global economy. There were barely any discussions about artificial intelligence and the challenges and opportunities it brings.

Towards the end of the campaign, a sketchy plan was announced for a data centre in Zenica on the site of the Željezara (steelworks), which had ceased operating. The Federation government, led by the Troika, paid for a feasibility study, but had already begun speculating about hundreds of potential jobs before it was even clear whether this investment, worth several hundred million marks, was feasible in Zenica. A private company also mentioned building a data centre in Mostar, but politicians sought to avoid referring to artificial intelligence in their public appearances, treating it as a term they did not sufficiently understand.

Where Have the Voters Gone

Compared with the 2022 election, 220,000 fewer people voted, despite the electoral register containing 82,000 more voters. The decline was recorded across almost the entire country and was steepest in the Croat-populated part of Herzegovina. Official turnout fell from just over 50 per cent to just over 42 per cent, or from 1.65 million voters to 1.43 million. This was the lowest turnout since 2002, having consistently remained above 51 per cent since then.

However, the actual turnout rate is higher because, in the view of most experts who closely monitor elections, the electoral register does not reflect the number of people living in Bosnia and Herzegovina. While unofficial estimates put the number living in the country for most of the year at between two and two and a half million, the electoral register contains 3.36 million people.

Turnout in the 2026 election fell in almost every municipality for which comparable data are available. The largest declines occurred in places where turnout in 2022 had been unusually high, such as West Herzegovina, which has now moved closer to averages elsewhere in the country.

The decline in turnout was greater in the Federation than in the Republika Srpska. Within the Federation, turnout in West Herzegovina Canton fell by 16 percentage points, from 56 to 40 per cent, with a quarter fewer voters than in the previous general election. Tuzla Canton recorded the largest fall in voter numbers: from 208,000 four years ago to 172,000 this year. Una-Sana Canton had the country’s lowest turnout, at just 29 per cent. Bosnian-Podrinje Canton, at 55 per cent, continued to have the highest turnout in the Federation. In Ravno, turnout almost halved, falling by a full 40 percentage points. Significant declines were also recorded in Ljubuški, Neum and Sarajevo’s Stari Grad municipality.

In the Republika Srpska, turnout fell in every constituency, by between five and eight percentage points. The largest decline was in Banja Luka, where 14,000 fewer people voted. The smallest was in Bijeljina. Turnout was highest in Pale and Istočno Sarajevo, where more than 60 per cent of registered voters cast their ballots, and lowest in Derventa and Prijedor, where just over a third voted. Turnout rose only in Šamac, while voter numbers increased by 125 in Šamac and by 13 in Jezero.

Initial post-election analyses attributed the decline in turnout to three main factors: abstention among voters left unmotivated by the campaigns and the parties’ records, emigration from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the use of new technology that reduced opportunities for abuse.

What Citizens Changed

The two most visible changes were the election of the HDZ’s candidate to the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the loss of support for two of the three parties in the Troika coalition.

After Željko Komšić served four terms in the Presidency over the past two decades – a total of 16 years – his party, the DF, lost one of the three seats in this state institution. Komšić himself failed to win a seat in the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina, for which he had stood.

Throughout his terms, the HDZ built its politics around ‘Croats being outvoted in Bosnia and Herzegovina’. This time, its candidate, Darijana Filipović, won, meaning that, in most analysts’ view, the focus is now on the HDZ’s substantive programme. This could be important for the next election and for creating more room for opposition among Croat voters.

The Troika parties failed to retain the position they had secured in the previous election. Voters dissatisfied with this governing coalition’s performance punished Naša stranka most heavily, followed by Narod i pravda. The SDP, the third and largest party in the bloc, retained its share of the vote, probably thanks above all to its more stable voter base compared with the other two parties, but also to its candidate for the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Denis Bećirović.

Stranka za BiH (Party for BiH) now led by Semir Efendić, a former SDA official, made the largest gains in the election by offering policies that could be placed between those of the SDA and the DF – a space previously dominated by NIP.

Voters of the SDA, SNSD and HDZ voted much as they had in the previous election.

The Rule of Law Disappeared from Leaders’ Speeches

The parties that won the election no longer even pay lip service to the rule of law as a foundation for the country’s accession to the European Union and for equality in society. Although it featured in party programmes, politicians downplayed the significance of court judgments and ignored the judiciary during the campaign.

At the SDA’s final major campaign rally in Sarajevo’s Zetra Hall, Bakir Izetbegović portrayed former Federation prime minister Fadil Novalić as a victim. In early 2024, Novalić was sentenced to four years in prison for abuse of office in the procurement of ventilators during the coronavirus pandemic. ‘Fadil, thank you for everything you have done and for the sacrifice you have made. We are waiting for you to return so we can carry on,’ Izetbegović told thousands of SDA members and supporters. Rather than disowning officials whose corruption convictions are final, the SDA leadership is announcing plans to ‘carry on’ working with them.

At the election victory celebration, Nenad Nešić stood shoulder to shoulder with Milorad Dodik. Nešić is entering the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina with more than 7,000 votes. He was arrested in December 2024, while still serving as Minister of Security, as part of an investigation into abuses dating from an earlier period, and remains under investigation. The SNSD itself again fielded Miroslav Kraljević, the mayor of Vlasenica, who is on trial before the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina in two cases – for glorifying war criminals and for crimes in Vlasenica, where he and others are charged with detaining, torturing and abusing dozens of people.

The SDP placed particular emphasis on the rule of law in its detailed programme, but its candidates downplayed the significance of the indictment against minister Vojin Mijatović during the campaign. He did not stand in this year’s election. Another SDP candidate, Adnan Šteta, Sarajevo’s transport minister, was mentioned during the investigation into a tram accident in Sarajevo that killed a university student and seriously injured a secondary school pupil, but prosecutors did not establish his responsibility for the accident. Not only did he never resign following the accident and the ensuing protests, but he headed the SDP’s list in Sarajevo Canton. He received the highest number of preference votes in Sarajevo Canton – more than 21,000.

What Was Positive

Despite fears that they would not be ready in time or would face sabotage, new electoral technologies brought the greatest improvement to voting. Biometric verification before voting and the electronic counting of votes from ballot papers scanned immediately also increased voters’ trust in the electoral process. In the long term, this greater trust could encourage more people to stand for election and vote.

The publication of results just over an hour after polling stations closed also marked a complete departure from previous election nights. Previously, parties published often conflicting results and declared victory themselves, while the CEC released its first preliminary results only around midnight, and only for the Presidency or the president of the Republika Srpska. It appeared that the parties controlled the process while the CEC struggled to count the votes. The long wait for results, sometimes lasting days or weeks, fuelled suspicions that the will expressed by voters was being altered after the event.

This time, by around 9 pm, it was already clear who the winners and losers were, and by midnight the public and the parties had had time to digest voters’ choices. The rapid results also brought forward discussions about post-election coalitions. This time, assemblies will be able to fill their seats more quickly.

Unlike in previous elections, political parties largely refrained from alleging vote theft. The Pod lupom coalition said that the election had increased public trust but stressed that the successful introduction of electoral technologies should be a good beginning rather than the end of efforts to address other challenges, such as trading control over polling stations and all the irregularities that occur before election day.