Vučić concedes defeat to the Student List in Serbia's election
The leader of the governing party says a sample of votes shows it lost the snap parliamentary election. No official result has been released.
Aleksandar Vučić, leader of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and the dominant figure in Serbian politics for more than a decade, conceded defeat in Sunday's snap parliamentary election. The Student List, a movement that grew out of protests against his government, won.
Based on a sample of votes, "it is clear that we have lost these elections," Vučić said, adding that final results are not yet in.
By his own count, the Student List will take between 135 and 140 seats and the SNS bloc about 105. He also estimated about 2.2 million votes for the students and 1.72 million for his party. No other party would enter parliament, he said, apart from ethnic minority parties, which need less than the 3% required of the rest. These are his figures, not an official count.
Turnout was close to 70%, the highest since the breakup of Yugoslavia.
In central Belgrade, students celebrated amid honking horns and shouts of "victory."
The protests began in November 2024, when a canopy at the Novi Sad train station collapsed and killed 16 people, and grew into a campaign against corruption and what demonstrators call creeping authoritarianism. In September the students registered their own list, and Vučić called the snap election.
Serbia, a Balkan country and European Union candidate, would have its first parliament without an SNS majority in more than a decade if official results confirm his estimate. For readers in Mexico, it is a case of a civil protest movement moving to the ballot box and winning.
