Despite that, the two agencies said they were satisfied with the results of the exit polls, which were conducted for the first time in Croatia on Sunday during presidential elections. The questionnaires given to voters as they were leaving polling stations included questions about their favourite candidate and about their age and education.
The agencies claim that the differences between their results and those of the DIP were minor.
Shortly after the closure of the polling stations, Puls reported that Mesic won slightly over 50 percent of the vote and GfK said that he had slightly less than 50 percent, and both also reported that independent candidate Boris Miksic, came in second with some 20 percent of votes, describing this as the greatest surprise of the elections.
According to the agencies' projections, Jadranka Kosor of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) was third with some 17 percent.
The Puls research manager, Dragan Bagic, told Hina today that according to the returns from polling stations in Croatia, the margin of error in Puls projections regarding the candidate Mesic was only 0.39 percent.
Bagic went on to say that votes from the Diaspora made up 3.5 percent in the entire results of the voting, and Kosor gained 1.9 percent of those 3.5 percent, which is why she ended up second according to DIP results, Bagic said.
The other reason for the difference was the fact that according to information available to Puls, elderly citizens and those with lower education, who mainly voted for Kosor, mainly refused to to be covered by exit polls, Bagic said.
The GfK agency director Igor Matutinovic also said that his agency had no resources to include returns from polling stations outside Croatia into first projections of election results.
Croatian voters on Sunday failed to elect a new head of state and will have an opportunity to choose between the incumbent president Stjepan Mesic, who is supported by several leading opposition parties, and HDZ candidate Jadranka Kosor in two weeks' time.
Citing returns from 99.73 per cent of polling stations by 1130 hours on Monday, DIP reported that the incumbent president Mesic won 48.92 per cent of votes, while Kosor gained 20.30 per cent.
Miksic came in third with 17.79 percent.