From Prizren to Drenas/ What the data from local elections in Kosovo show

2025-11-10 20:16:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

In Prizren, a city with around 190,000 eligible voters, around 25,000 votes are enough to elect the mayor.

In this way, Shaqir Totaj from the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) was elected. He received the trust of 13.4 percent of voters who participated in the November 9 runoff in the local elections.

Similarly, most of the other mayors of Kosovo's 38 municipalities were elected. The mayors of municipalities with a Serb majority and the mayor of Mamusha, where the majority of residents belong to the Turkish community, received the greatest support.

Of the municipalities with an Albanian majority, the highest percentage of support was for PDK's Mehmat Ballazhi in Han i Elezit.

He secured a four-year term by receiving 32 percent of the votes of eligible voters. There are two reasons for this: voter turnout was low and there are still complaints that voter lists are not completely clean.

The November 9 runoff was the third time that citizens of these municipalities went to the polls within this calendar year: on February 9 for the parliamentary elections, on October 12 for the first round of local elections, and on November 9 for the second round.

Furthermore, the possibility of early parliamentary elections is also being discussed, as the results of February 9th did not yet produce a government.

This apparently meant that in most municipalities, voter turnout in the runoff was lower than in the first round. However, those who did vote mainly chose the parties that had led their municipalities during the previous four-year term.

Of Kosovo's 38 municipalities, only four saw a change of government. The only major party that retained all the municipalities it had won in the previous elections four years ago and managed to add three more was the Vetevendosje Movement.

She won with Valon Prebreza in Fushë Kosovë, a municipality where the Democratic League of Kosovo had been in power for years; with Faton Peci in South Mitrovica, where the Democratic Party of Kosovo was in power, and with Halil Thaçi in Obiliq, where the previous elections had been won by Xhafer Gashi, an independent who later joined the LDK.

The other municipality where there was a change was Drenas. Traditionally won by PDK, this time Ramiz Lladrovci was elected mayor, who after two terms as mayor, did not accept the PDK nomination, but managed to win again, running with an independent list.

All of this resulted in eight parties winning in Kosovo's municipalities. The Serbian List won the most municipalities, managing to secure all ten with a Serb majority. LVV and LDK are ranked behind it, with seven municipalities each. PDK was ranked first in six municipalities, while the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo in five. /REL