Serbia’s long-dominant leader Aleksandar Vucic has conceded defeat in a snap parliamentary election to a list formed out of the country’s student protest movement.

“It is clear that we have lost these elections,” Vucic said on Sunday night, citing a sample of votes that put the Student List on between 135 and 140 seats in the 250-member parliament against 105 for his own list.

The Republic Election Commission subsequently put the Student List on 52.54 per cent of the vote and the United Serbia list on 39.29 per cent, with 8,077 of 8,392 polling stations processed. On those figures the Student List takes about 140 seats to United Serbia’s 103; 126 are needed for a majority.

Turnout reached 64.9 per cent by 6 p.m., which Al Jazeera reported as the highest since the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1992. Voting closed at 8 p.m. local time and was, the outlet said, marred by reports of intimidation and procedural problems.

The result ends the governing position the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) has held since 2012. Vucic resigned the presidency on 27 September to stand for prime minister, campaigning on higher pensions, public-sector wages and investment. Ana Brnabic, president of the National Assembly, is holding the presidency on an interim basis.

The movement behind the winning list grew out of protests that followed the collapse of a railway station canopy at Novi Sad in November 2024, which killed 16 people. Demands for accountability over that disaster widened into a sustained national campaign against corruption.

“Students won, and with them also a hope that Serbia can be a country of justice, freedom and dignity,” said Radomir Saicic, a parliamentary candidate for the list, at its election headquarters. “Let this night be the beginning of a new chapter.” The Belgrade-based FoNet agency reported cheers, euphoria and tears as Vucic’s statement was broadcast there.

Ilija Srdanovic, a cardiologist and professor at the University of Novi Sad, is named as the most likely candidate for prime minister. The National Assembly must be constituted within 30 days of final results, with a government to be formed within 90 days after that. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen congratulated the Student List on its victory.

A note on sourcing

The Daily Mirror filing used here carries the Al Jazeera report rather than independent reporting of its own, so the two outlets are not fully independent accounts of the same event.

Not reported

Final certified results had not been published at the time of writing, and the figures above remain preliminary. The filings do not say which lists take the remaining seats, what coalition arrangements the Student List may need, whether Vucic intends to remain SNS leader, or what the reported intimidation and procedural problems consisted of.

Sources