Zoran Milanovic wins Croatia presidential vote

Bloomberg

Croatians shot down President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic’s bid for a second term, electing the prime minister who led the nation into the European Union to rebalance politics in the bloc’s newest member.
Zoran Milanovic, who ran the Adriatic state’s government from 2011 to 2015, won 52.7% of votes in the presidential runoff. Kitarovic, a former NATO executive whose popularity unexpectedly plummeted in the last weeks of the campaign after she was tied to the scandal-plagued mayor of Zagreb, got 47.3%.
Kitarovic’s defeat could spell trouble for her ally Andrej Plenkovic, the current prime minister, before general elections in the fall and just after his government took over the EU’s rotating presidency.
While she reached out to voters embracing anti-immigrant positions seen in fellow EU states Poland and Hungary, Milanovic vowed to reject extremism, fight graft, and stop the outflow of young people who have left Croatia to seek better lives in western Europe.
“This is the victory for everyone, not only for those who are ethnic Croats, but for all citizens,” Milanovic told cheering supporters in Zagreb.
“In my term, I’ll try to listen to everyone, and try not to hurt anyone, because we’re all different.”