Days after his defeat in the local elections, supporters of outgoing Prime Minister and SDSM leader Zoran Zaev came out with a new talking point – that Zaev actually won the elections, if we count the votes of all the parties that are currently in his coalition.

Zaev’s SDSM lost all major cities and urban centers but two – his hometown of Strumica and Skopje’s Centar district – against a dozen key wins for VMRO-DPMNE. They also lost the capital Skopje to the VMRO backed candidate Danela Arsovska in the run-off – after Zaev announced that he will resign from the Government and from SDSM if she wins. VMRO won by over 50,000 votes in the first round council races and by over 100,000 votes in the mayoral races. But according to the new SDSM math, if adding the votes of the DUI, BESA, LDP/DOM parties and a host of other smaller parties in the SDSM led coalition, the total trumps the total of VMRO, the two Albanian opposition parties AA and Alternative, and Levica.

The results show that a lot of voters who supported Zaev’s coalition partners did not vote for the SDSM mayoral candidates, in the first or the second round of the elections. DUI in particular clearly snubbed Zaev in the race in Skopje when they didn’t bring out their supporters in Skopje’s Saraj district – although Zaev’s candidate Petre Silegov would have lost to Arsovska even with full turnout from DUI. This indicates that the coalition is not that stable, and Zaev’s allies, most of whom have a long track record of switching sides and allying with the winner, could be on the market.

VMRO responded to this attempt to portray the local elections as success for SDSM by repeating its position that early elections should be held as soon as possible. “If SDSM is so popular as they claim, they should be happy to hold general elections”, VMRO notes.

Zaev has no credibility left after the voters repudiated him. He needs to go and take all his structures with him, VMRO-DPMNE said in a statement.

VMRO-DPMNE calls for early elections, while SDSM is trying to keep its current coalition in place – another indication that they, and most of their partners, fear that they will lose a large number of seats if general elections are held soon.