The presidential election in Croatia has headed to a run-off round after both major candidates, including incumbent President Ivo Josipovic, failed to get 50 percent of the votes, Press TV reported.
According to the partial count of the Sunday poll, Josipovic and his main rival, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, failed to achieve more than half of the votes in the first round and are slated to face off in a run-off election on January 11.
In a neck-and-neck race on Sunday, Josipovic, who is backed by the center-left government, won 38.9 percent of the votes, while his conservative challenger secured 38.1 percent, according to the exit polls released by Croatian media.
Besides the two frontrunners in the first round, two other candidates Milan Kujundzic, a right-wing politician, and Ivan Vilibor Sincic, a eurosceptic, were also running for president.
Croatia's electoral commission put the turnout at around 36 percent with some 3.8 million eligible voters.
The presidential post in Croatia is largely ceremonial, but the vote is seen as a test for the center-left government, which is under fire for its failure to tackle the country's economic woes more than a year after it joined the European Union.
Croatia is struggling with a high unemployment rate of close to 20 percent and a soaring youth jobless rate, with half of the country's youth without work.
Croatia joined the EU in July 2013, becoming the bloc's 28th member, almost two decades after it declared independence from the former Yugoslavia Republic - a move that sparked the bloody civil war of 1991-1995.