Serbia’s Vucic concedes defeat to student-led movement in snap election
Aleksandar Vucic conceded defeat in Serbia’s snap parliamentary election after preliminary results gave the student-backed list a decisive majority, bringing his party’s 14-year hold on power to an apparent end. A representative projection by CESID-IPSPS put the students on 138 seats and Vucic’s SNS on 104 in the 250-seat parliament, with the remaining mandates going to ethnic minority parties. Vucic offered a similar estimate and said the result would be respected.
Turnout approached 70%, Serbia’s highest since the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1992, with long queues reported across the country and at overseas polling stations. Celebrations broke out in Belgrade after the concession, as students and supporters hailed the vote as a rejection of corruption and increasingly authoritarian government.
The election followed almost two years of demonstrations sparked by the 2024 collapse of a railway-station canopy in Novi Sad, which killed 16 people. The disaster became a focal point for wider anger over accountability and governance, allowing a leaderless youth movement to succeed where Serbia’s divided opposition had repeatedly failed. Tensions remained high during voting: riot police secured the election commission area in central Belgrade, while local media reported several violent incidents elsewhere in the country.
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