SKOPJE, Macedonia – Macedonia’s conservative Prime minister Nikola Gruevski has won general elections in the tiny Balkan country, but would need to form a coalition to govern for another four-year term, according to results issued by the State Electoral Commission.

With votes counted in 97.9 percent of the country’s polling stations today, the 40-year-old Gruevski’s VMRO DPMNE party led with 39.4 percent of the vote, ahead of the rival Social Democrats with 33 percent.

The conservatives’ previous coalition partner, the ethnic Albanian DUI party, got 10 percent in Sunday’s vote.

Gruevski called the snap poll a year early, following an opposition walkout of parliament sparked by the jailing of a popular television channel boss for alleged fraud.