Serbia’s long-serving leader Aleksandar Vucic has conceded defeat in the country’s snap parliamentary election, after early projections pointed to a majority for the student-led Student List. The concession came on Sunday night, hours after polling stations closed, even though final official results had not yet been announced.
Speaking at his party headquarters in Belgrade, Vucic said the outcome was clear from a sample of results. “We still do not have final results, on the basis of a sample … it is clear that we have lost these elections, the Student List has won, they will have between 135 and 140 seats and we will have 105, no one else has entered parliament,” he said.
The seat figures he cited are estimates, not a certified result. Serbia’s 250-seat National Assembly requires 126 seats for a majority, so a total in the range Vucic gave would put the Student List comfortably above that threshold.
What the early projections show
An initial projection by the Centre for Free Elections and Democracy (CeSID) and polling agency Ipsos, reported in election-night coverage, put the Student List at 52.0% of the vote and 138 seats, with Vucic’s list at 39.3% and 104 seats. Those figures are also projections based on a sample of polling stations, not the final count from Serbia’s Republic Electoral Commission (RIK).
That distinction matters because the earliest partial official tally looked very different. At a very early stage, when only a small share of polling stations had been processed, the official count showed Vucic’s list ahead. Early partial counts are not necessarily representative of the national vote, and they can shift substantially as more stations report. The concession rests on the sample-based projection, and the official result will only be known once counting is complete.
Supporters of the Student List celebrated in Belgrade after the concession, while the movement also urged citizens to support election observers and monitor the count as it continued.
A record turnout
Turnout was unusually high. Monitors CeSID and Ipsos put turnout at 67.6% by 7 p.m. local time, two hours before polls closed at 8 p.m. That level was described in reporting as the highest in decades, and the highest since the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Long queues were reported at polling stations across the country, and many voters abroad also took part.
A total of 6,451,292 citizens were eligible to vote, and 18 lists contested the election for the 250 seats. Under Serbia’s system, lists generally need 3% of the vote to enter parliament, with special rules for recognised minority lists.
How the election came about
Vucic called the snap election in September. He had resigned as president in September so that he could stand as a candidate for prime minister, a move that framed the vote as a direct contest over his future in government. His Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) has dominated Serbian politics since 2012. Vucic first became prime minister in 2014 and then president in 2017.
The Student List grew out of almost two years of student-led protests. The protests began after a concrete canopy collapsed at the railway station in Novi Sad on 1 November 2024, killing 16 people. Students and their supporters accused the authorities of corruption and a lack of accountability over public infrastructure. Vucic and his party have denied those accusations.
What began as a demand for accountability over the Novi Sad disaster broadened into a wider movement calling for stronger institutions, the rule of law and better education. The Student List’s candidates include academics, doctors, artists, farmers and other civic figures, led by cardiologist Ilija Srdanovic.
Pre-election polling had pointed to a close race. One Ipsos poll published on 22 October put Vucic’s list at 47% and the students at 40%, while another institute had the students ahead. The gap between pollsters underlined how uncertain the outcome was heading into polling day.
What happens next
The next step is the completion of the official count. Until the Republic Electoral Commission publishes its results, the seat totals remain projections, however confident the concession sounded. If the projection holds, the Student List would be in a position to form a government on its own, without needing a coalition partner.
For now, the confirmed facts are narrower, and they are significant on their own: record turnout, a concession from the incumbent leader on the basis of a sample, and a projection of a clear Student List majority. The official count will decide whether that projection becomes the final result.