Edi Rama wins Albania’s elections in a landslide, secures fourth term in office

Brussels – The vote count is still underway, but the data released by Albania’s Central Electoral Commission are unequivocal: the Socialist Party is one step closer to victory that will allow the outgoing premier, Edi Rama, to remain in power for a fourth consecutive term. The Socialists–at 52.8 percent– should also easily win an absolute majority in Tirana’s parliament, thus securing a key position of strength to move in forced stages toward EU membership by 2030, the promise with which Rama overwhelmingly won elections.

“Today, the Albanian people will decide to move forward with great strength and give us all the strength we need to make Albania the next European member state,” Rama told reporters yesterday (May 11) outside the polling station where he voted. And so it was, despite a decidedly low turnout at 42 percent, 4 percent lower than the last election in 2021. According to projections reported by the Albanian Post, the Socialists could occupy more than 80 parliamentary seats out of the total 140, which improved compared with four years ago when Rama’s party won 74 seats. It did better only in 2013, when it became prime minister for the first time, winning 57.6 percent of the vote and 83 seats.

Challengers from the Alliance for a Glorious Albania, the center-right coalition led by the Democratic Party and its historic leader (and last premier before Rama’s hegemony), Sali Berisha, remain far behind, at 34.2 percent. After them, a wide gap: the third force is the Social Democratic Party, which for now has totaled 3.7 percent of the vote. The smaller anti-corruption parties failed the test and are not expected to win more than 10 seats overall: the Initiative Albania coalition is projected to win 3.4 percent, and Agron Shehaj’s Opportunity Party (Mundesia) 2.6 percent. The left-wing Together Movement (Levizja Bashke) won 1.2 percent of the vote.

A different verdict emerged from the first historic diaspora vote. According to data published by the Central Election Commission, 43.9 percent of the over 150,000 Albanians abroad registered for the election voted for the center-right coalition. In comparison, 42.6 percent voted for the Socialist Party.

Balkan Insight, a news site of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, reported “several incidents” during Sunday’s voting, which, however, were called “sporadic cases” by the chairman of the Election Commission, Ilirjan Celibashi. The counting of diaspora votes in Greece was suspended after a protest by the Democratic Party.