TIRANA, May 13, 2023 – Albania’s voters will head to polls Sunday to elect mayors and councils for the country’s 61 municipalities in the first competitive administrative elections in eight years.
Two groupings have fielded the most mayoral candidates — the ruling Socialist Party of Albania (SPA) and the Together We Win coalition (TWW), an amalgamation of the largest faction of the divided center-right Democratic Party, the Freedom Party and several other smaller partners.
A total of 40 parties are running candidates for mayors and municipal councils. Several independent candidates are also running.
Races affecting the largest portion of Albania’s population include those in Tirana, Durres, Elbasan and Shkoder.
Sunday’s elections will see 144 mayoral candidates, including two independent candidates. In total, there are 23,907 candidates for mayor and municipal council members, with 11,843 women and 12,064 men, according to election officials.
The campaign was characterized by national leaders traveling around the country to support local candidates, and independent commentators noted that national political rhetoric and personal attacks of leaders often superseded narratives aimed at solving local problems.
Several polls show the ruling Socialists have an advantage in most of the key races, and the SPA says it aims to win up to 50 of the 61 municipalities. The opposition says the opinion polls cannot be trusted and that its results will be surprising and voters should turn out massively and vote for change.
The campaign concluded Friday night, with Saturday being a reflection day by law with campaigning prohibited. Voting Sunday will take place from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. in 5,213 polling stations.
According to official data, 3,650,550 Albanian citizens have the right to vote, while 122,545 voters will have turned 18 and be able to participate for the first time in the elections. The number of actual voters is likely to be much lower, however, as Albanians living abroad, about a third of that number, cannot vote in elections unless they travel back to their hometowns to do so.
Three municipalities — Kamëz, Vorë and Elbasan — are using electronic voting, so their results will be available shortly after the polls close. The rest usually take up to 48 hours to declare results.
The campaign for the local elections took place generally quietly, without significant incidents, while there were no shortage of denunciations about the use of the administration and its resources, or cases of vote buying.
According to the police, since April 14, 54 cases of criminal offenses have been registered in the field of election crimes, for which 88 people have been criminally prosecuted.
Hundreds of observers, including 230 foreign ones, will be on hand to make sure election rules are followed.
SPA has become Albania’s dominant party in the past decade, holding power centrally and locally, including absolute power in current municipal councils.
The opposition remains deeply divided but in a positive move for Albanian democracy has returned to the local electoral system after boycotting the elections four years ago, accusing SPA of authoritarian rule and breaching electoral rules.
The 2019 local elections saw the lowest turnout ever in post-communist Albania.
