 On 22 April and 7 May 1990, the first free multi-party elections were held in Croatia.Franjo Tuđman's Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) won by a 42% margin against Ivica Račan's reformed communist Party of Democratic Change (SDP) who won 26%.However, Croatia's first-past-the-post election system enabled Tuđman to form the government relatively independently as the win translated into 205 mandates (out of 351 total).