Serbia’s long-serving leader, Aleksandar Vucic, conceded defeat yesterday in a fiercely contested parliamentary election. This marked a seismic political shift that ended his right-wing Serbian Progressive Party’s (SNS) 14-year grip on power. The election served as a massive showdown between Vucic’s government and a diverse, popular opposition movement led by university students who had spent two years protesting against corruption and the dismantling of democracy.
Out of Serbia’s 6.4 million eligible voters electing lawmakers to the 250-member Parliament, Vucic’s SNS party won around 1.7 million votes, while the newly formed opposition movement- the Students’ List, took the victory with approximately 2.2 million votes. Monitors predicted that total turnout could reach around 70 percent, a level unseen in the Balkan country since the year 2000. Long queues formed throughout the day at polling stations inside Serbia and around the world, where some members of the Serbian diaspora voted in the middle of the night as authorities tied voting hours to local Serbian time.
Vucic, who was seeking to become Serbia’s prime minister, had resigned the presidency just last month to lead the campaign after serving two near-full terms as president. Public support for the populist leader had significantly eroded since the year 2024, when a concrete canopy collapsed at a train station in Novi Sad, killing 16 people. The tragedy set off a massive wave of youth protests that blamed the collapse on high-level corruption.
This leaderless youth movement proved to be a remarkably tough opponent for Vucic. Although university students entirely shaped the Students’ List movement, no actual students appeared on the ballot. They instead ran a campaign focused on a non-partisan effort to rebuild Serbia’s economy and restore its democracy. They chose candidates who were little-known experts, athletes, farmers, and artists. The aftermath of the election brought massive celebrations in the country alongside heavy security measures as the nation witnessed its historic transition.
