The ruling Social Democrats (SDSM), in coalition with ethnic Albanian party Besa, won 46 MPs in North Macedonia's 120-seat parliament in the July 15 snap general election, two more than the conservative opposition VMRO-DPMNE, the president of the state election commission (SEC) Oliver Derkoski said on July 16, citing the final unofficial results.

Who will form the next government is still uncertain given the tight election results, but a coalition of one of the two main parties with the third placed ethnic Albanian Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) is almost certain. However the situation will be more clear after the process of filing complaints ends in the next few days.

The SEC website was hacked immediately after the end of the elections late on July 15, and is still down, and the commission was under strong public pressure to announce the results that were eventually released with a huge delay on Thursday evening.

Derkoski, who comes from the ranks of the opposition VMRO-DPME, said that the site was attacked by hackers and that there was no damage, just a postponement of the calculations of the election results.

Derkoski announced that 327,329 citizens voted for the SDSM and Besa, while 315,340 voted for VMRO-DPMNE.

The DUI took third place in the elections, gaining 15 seats in the assembly.

The coalition of the Alliance for Albanians and the Alternative will have 12 seats, Levica (Left) two seats and the Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA) one seat, Derkoski announced.

This is the first time Levica will enter North Macedonia’s parliament.

SDSM leader and ex-PM Zoran Zaev declared an election victory in the early hours of Thursday. VMRO-DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski did not appear following the elections. He held a news conference at 12.30am on July 16, where he failed to accept the election defeat, instead saying that VMRO-DPMNE won more votes than SDSM without Besa’s votes, and that his party should form the next government.

The parties can file complaints about the elections results in the next 48 hours, so there are possibilities that the elections could be re-run in some places.

There is almost no party that did not cast doubt on the election results. The ruling SDSM asked the SEC to check the results thoroughly as according to its figures, the party should have at least one more MP.

Levica also believes that it won two or three more parliament seats.

1.8mn people were eligible to vote and 942,334 cast their votes, while 31,466 votes were invalid.