Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė will face a harder fight in this year’s presidential election than she did in 2009

Lithuania is due to hold presidential elections, with the first round of voting scheduled for 11 May. Ingrida Unikaitė-Jakuntavičienė writes that while the incumbent president Dalia Grybauskaitė won the 2009 elections comfortably, she is unlikely to emerge with an absolute majority in the first round of voting in 2014. Despite having a healthy lead in the polls, she is still short of the 50 per cent required to avoid going to a second round, and it is not unforeseeable that she could lose to one of her challengers in a direct run off.