A peaceful repeat vote at polling stations in Macedonia on Sunday confirmed the ruling coalition's landslide victory in parliamentary elections that had initially been marred by violence, election officials said.
Held under tight police security, the rerun had not been expected to change the overall result from June 1 elections. But it was meant to determine which of the two main ethnic Albanian parties would be invited to join the governing coalition.
State electoral commission spokesman Zoran Tanevski said the reruns, conducted at stations where violence and irregularities occurred during the earlier vote, showed Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski's VMRO party had won 50.4 percent of the vote, with 97 percent of the votes from both rounds counted. The main opposition Social Democrats received 24.4 percent, he said.
Tanevski said the ethnic Albanian DUI party had garnered 11.5 percent of the vote and its archrival DPA received 7.6 percent.
The voting Sunday was held without any major irregularities in 183 polling stations, mostly in ethnic Albanian areas. Minor violations stopped voting in four polling stations. The country's total number of polling stations is 2,976. Overall turnout was 57.4 percent.
The two ethnic Albanian parties have no major political differences. Although the DUI has traditionally allied itself with the Social Democrats and the DPA with the center-right VMRO, whichever party led the voting was expected to form a coalition with Gruevski's party.
Both ethnic Albanian parties claimed victory late Sunday. The DUI said it won 18 of the 120 seats in the parliament, while the DPA said it secured 14 seats. DUI and DPA officials accused each other of minor electoral violations, but neither reported any serious incidents.