In Lithuania, following the tally of votes in the first round of presidential elections, the incumbent head of state, Gitanas Nauseda, who is running for a second term, and the country's Prime Minister, Ingrida Simonyte, have advanced to the second round, according to Delfi and LRT.
The first round of the 2024 presidential elections in this Baltic country was marked by an incredibly high voter turnout.
Earlier in Lithuania, a referendum on citizenship retention was held.
This year, 8 candidates participated in the presidential elections:
- the incumbent president, Gitanas Nauseda,
- Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte, nominated by the Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats Party,
- Dainius Zalimas, candidate from the Freedom Party,
- Giedrimas Jeglinskas, nominated by the Democratic Union "Vardan Lietuvos",
- candidate from the Labour Party Andrius Mazuronis,
- Ignas Vegele,
- Remigijus Zemaitaitis,
- Eduardas Vaitkus.
After the results were counted in all 1895 polling stations, it became clear that Nauseda and Simonyte had advanced to the second round of elections, receiving 44.54% and 19.94% of the votes, respectively.
Vegelis, who ran independently in the presidential elections, took third place. He was considered one of Nauseda's most likely opponents in the second round of presidential elections and received 12.47% of the vote.
Presidential elections
As noted by Lithuanian media, this year repeated the scenario of the previous presidential elections in 2019, when Nauseda and Simonyte also advanced to the second round of elections.
However, the results of the first round of elections were somewhat more favorable for Simonyte than for Nauseda at that time.
In May 2019, Gitanas Nauseda replaced Dalia Grybauskaite as the President of Lithuania, who had served two terms, since 2009.
At that time, Nauseda, a former advisor to the president of the Lithuanian bank SEB, after processing the protocols from 1589 electoral districts (out of a total of 1972 districts), received 70.11% of the votes. He took office as Lithuanian president on July 12, 2019.