Serbian leader Aleksandar Vučić concedes defeat in fiercely contested parliamentary election

Serbia’s veteran leader Aleksandar Vučić has conceded defeat to the student movement, ushering in a seismic political shift after two years of student-led protests gave rise to a fiercely contested parliamentary election.

Speaking on Sunday, Vučić cited preliminary results that showed the student-backed protest movement surging ahead. “Based on a stratified sample, it is clear that we lost these elections,” Vučić told supporters at his party headquarters in Belgrade.

The admission of defeat came after a record number of voters turned up to cast their ballot on Sunday. Across the country, long lines snaked out of polling stations, with some reporting wait times of up to two hours. By ۷pm local time, pollsters and monitors CeSID and Ipsos put the turnout at ۶۷.۶%, the highest since the breakup of Yugoslavia in ۱۹۹۲.

The high turnout, along with the estimated ۱۵۰,۰۰۰ people who flocked to the students’ final pre-election rally last week in Belgrade, fuelled early speculation that the students may have rallied enough support to bring an end to Vučić’s ۱۲ years in power.

In the lead-up to the vote, opinion polls had varied wildly, with analysts pointing to the high degree of uncertainty at play as the candidates representing the grassroots student movement went up against Vučić’s rightwing Serbian Progressive party (SNS).

Some had cited the possibility of a close race, suggesting a risk of post-election unrest and clashes, after a campaign that saw the students rattle Vučić’s firm grip on power like no one else in the ۱۴ years since his party took office.

The results will be watched across the world as part of ۱۰ pivotal days of elections across the globe in which the authoritarian right is facing off against pro-democracy forces. The victory for the student-led movement in Serbia is also likely to reverberate across Europe, adding momentum to the youth and student protests that have rocked cities across the continent.

The high-stakes election in the EU-candidate country traces back to November ۲۰۲۴, when a concrete canopy collapsed at the Novi Sad railway station, killing ۱۶ people. The tragedy set off protests among students, snowballing into a broad anti-government movement as evidence suggested that slipshod construction, fraud and corruption were to blame for the roof collapse.

As Vučić, the increasingly authoritarian leader who has dominated Serbian politics for more than a decade, grappled with mounting pressure from the students, he resigned the presidency last month to gamble on snap elections.

The students seized on the chance to transform the movement into political power. They announced a slate of ۲۵۰ candidates for the ۲۵۰-seat parliament, ranging from academics to athletes and farmers, as they called on voters to back their push to rebuild Serbia’s economy and restore its democracy.

The campaign pitted them against the political monolith of Vučić’s SNS party, leaving in an uphill battle against a ruling party that had taken over almost all of the broadcast channels and which wielded ministries and other state institutions as political tools.

Vučić had repeatedly sought to undermine the students by accusing them of being stooges of foreign powers, a charge that the students have dismissed. As he pledged to boost pensions and public sector salaries, Vučić sought to present himself as a leader capable of walking the diplomatic tightrope between the country’s ties with the west, Russia and China to steer Serbia through global uncertainties.

Undaunted, the students took to the streets, staging rallies, turning up in the rural areas that had long been Vučić strongholds and going door-to-door as they sought to pitch themselves as the anti-establishment candidates and to rally voters behind their slogan of “Serbia or Mafia?”

The message was reiterated on Sunday as Dejan Bodiroga, a candidate on the students’ list and EuroLeague Basketball president, cast his ballot in Belgrade.

“Today, above all, Serbia is fighting for freedom and for the return of a country that has been hijacked,” Bodiroga told reporters. “Serbia is voting today to decide which direction it will take – towards the future or the past.”

In the lead-up to Sunday’s vote, both international and local election monitors expressed concerns about detentions and reports of surveillance and cyber-attacks against activists.

On Sunday, independent monitoring groups warned of recorded cases of photographing of ballots that suggested pressure on voters, attempted vote-buying and carousel voting.

Among them was Raša Nedeljkov of the election monitory CRTA, who said that “a large number of irregularities continue to be recorded, while violent incidents outside polling stations are also becoming increasingly frequent.”