{"id":426347,"date":"2025-05-12T11:28:21","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T09:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2025\/05\/12\/edi-rama-elezioni-albania-ue\/"},"modified":"2025-05-12T12:21:53","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T10:21:53","slug":"edi-rama-wins-albanias-elections-in-a-landslide-secures-fourth-term-in-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/05\/12\/edi-rama-wins-albanias-elections-in-a-landslide-secures-fourth-term-in-office\/","title":{"rendered":"Edi Rama wins Albania&#8217;s elections in a landslide, secures fourth term in office"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Brussels &#8211; The vote count is still underway, but the data released by Albania&#8217;s Central Electoral Commission are unequivocal: the Socialist Party is one step closer to victory that will allow the outgoing premier, <strong>Edi Rama<\/strong>, to remain <strong>in power for a fourth consecutive term<\/strong>. The Socialists&#8211;at 52.8 percent&#8211; should also\u00a0easily win an absolute majority in Tirana&#8217;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 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/05\/09\/albanian-elections-edi-rama-poised-for-fourth-term-against-a-revived-berisha-with-diaspora-vote-uncertainty\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">elections<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Today, the Albanian people will decide to move forward with great strength and give us all the strength we need to\u00a0<strong>make Albania the next European member state<\/strong>,&#8221; 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\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/albanianpost.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">projections<\/a> reported by the <em>Albanian Post<\/em>, <strong>the Socialists could occupy more than 80 parliamentary seats out of the total 140<\/strong>, which improved compared with four years ago when Rama&#8217;s party won\u00a074 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.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_426257\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"width: 528px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/000_372L3CT-scaled.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-426257 \" src=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/000_372L3CT-scaled.jpg\" width=\"528\" height=\"351\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/000_372L3CT-scaled.jpg 2560w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/000_372L3CT-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/000_372L3CT-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/000_372L3CT-768x511.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/000_372L3CT-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/000_372L3CT-2048x1363.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/000_372L3CT-750x499.jpg 750w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/000_372L3CT-1140x759.jpg 1140w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 528px) 100vw, 528px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-426257\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Democratic Party leader, Sali Berisha, in\u00a0Tirana on 15\/3\/25 (Photo by Adnan Beci \/ AFP)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>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&#8217;s hegemony), <strong>Sali Berisha, remain far behind, at 34.2 percent<\/strong>. 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 <strong>smaller anti-corruption parties<\/strong> failed the test and are<strong> not expected to win more than 10 seats overall<\/strong>: the Initiative Albania coalition is projected to win 3.4 percent, and Agron Shehaj&#8217;s Opportunity Party (Mundesia) 2.6 percent. The left-wing Together Movement\u00a0(Levizja Bashke) won\u00a01.2 percent of the vote.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0px;\">A different verdict emerged from the <strong>first historic diaspora vote<\/strong>. According to data published by the Central Election Commission, 43.9 percent of the over\u00a0150,000 Albanians abroad registered for the election voted for the center-right coalition. In comparison, 42.6 percent voted for the Socialist Party.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0px;\"><em>Balkan Insight<\/em>, a news site of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, <a href=\"https:\/\/balkaninsight.com\/2025\/05\/12\/edi-ramas-socialist-party-leads-in-albanian-parliamentary-elections\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reported<\/a>\u00a0&#8220;several incidents&#8221; during Sunday&#8217;s voting, which, however, were called &#8220;sporadic cases&#8221; 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With the vote count still underway, the Socialist Party (at 52.8 percent) is racing towards a landslide victory and could secure over 80 seats out of the 140 total in Tirana&#8217;s parliament. Distant is Sali Berisha&#8217;s center-right coalition, at 34.2 percent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7527,"featured_media":426327,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25681],"tags":[25816,28103,26891],"class_list":["post-426347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-albania-in-2","tag-edi-rama-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7527"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426347"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":426360,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426347\/revisions\/426360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}