As soon as the Government published the results of the controversial census, citizens poured into the comments on the social media to decry the results.

Liars; The Northerners (reference to the imposed name) did a fake census; We Macedonians are being made a minority; With numbers like these, Macedonia will be cantonized.., were just some of the numerous similarly toned comments.

The census showed that Macedonians are dropping from 63 percent in the 2002 census, down to 54 percent of all citizens, including the diaspora. As share of actual residents, Macedonians are at about 58 percent, while the Albanians reached almost 30 percent of all citizens and just under 24 percent of residents. The Macedonian diaspora largely boycotted the census, and about 132,000 residents – overwhelmingly believed to be ethnic Macedonians – also boycotted, both from political reasons and due to the large corona wave when the census took place.