{"id":228728,"date":"2026-10-25T23:05:36","date_gmt":"2026-10-25T23:05:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/serbian-leader-aleksandar-vucic-concedes-defeat-in-fiercely-contested-parliamentary-election-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-10-25T23:05:36","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T23:05:36","slug":"serbian-leader-aleksandar-vucic-concedes-defeat-in-fiercely-contested-parliamentary-election-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/serbian-leader-aleksandar-vucic-concedes-defeat-in-fiercely-contested-parliamentary-election-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Serbian leader Aleksandar Vu\u010di\u0107 concedes defeat in fiercely contested parliamentary election – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vu\u010di\u0107\u2019s 12-year reign looks to have been ended by record turnout of voters in election provoked by student-led protests
Follow the reaction to the result with our liveblog<\/a>
The long-serving leader of Serbia<\/a>, Aleksandar Vu\u010di\u0107, has conceded defeat, ushering in a seismic political shift after a historic election that saw \u200bthe increasingly authoritarian leader pitted against a student-led movement that had spent two years protesting against his government.
Vu\u010di\u0107 pointed to preliminary results that suggested voters had overwhelmingly backed the students, potentially giving them a majority in the country\u2019s 250-seat parliament.
\u201cWe still do not have final \u2060results,\u201d Vu\u010di\u0107 told supporters at his party headquarters in Belgrade. \u201cOn the basis of a sample \u2026 it is clear \u2060that we have lost these \u200belections, the Student \u200cList has \u200cwon, they will have between 135 \u200cand 140 seats and we will have 105.\u201d
A representative sample by the \u200bCESID-IPSPS pollsters suggested that the \u200bStudent List\u2019s candidate list will have \u200b138 deputies, while Vu\u010di\u0107\u2019s rightwing Serbian Progressive party (SNS) garnered 104 seats. The remaining seats \u200cwere likely to be shared \u200bbetween ethnic \u200bnational minority parties, said the pollsters.
As news broke that Vu\u010di\u0107\u2019s 12 years in power had come to an end, celebrations erupted on the streets of Belgrade and other cities.
Ivana, 43, in the capital was ecstatic. \u201cThis feels like New Year\u2019s Eve to me, like three New Year\u2019s Eves all at once, really,\u201d she said. \u201cWe can finally breathe again.\u201d She added that she was hoping for swift accountability for top members of the ousted regime, a key campaign pledge from the Student<\/strong> List.<\/strong>
Others offered handshakes, high fives and hugs to police officers in the streets, while a chorus of honking horns rang out from passing cars.
At the headquarters of the Student List, supporters chanted \u201cVictory, victory!\u201d as they applauded, cried and traded hugs. \u201cDear Serbia, tonight the voice of the people is being heard,\u201d said Radomir Sai\u010di\u0107, a professor at Belgrade University, speaking on behalf of the students at their headquarters. \u201cTonight we celebrate victory, tomorrow we build the future.\u201d
The scenes of joy came hours after a <\/strong>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 7pm local time pollsters and monitors CeSID and Ipsos put the turnout at 67.6%, the highest since the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1992.
The high turnout, along with the estimated 150,000 people who flocked<\/a> to the students\u2019 final pre-election rally last week in Belgrade, fuelled early speculation that the students may have rallied enough support to launch a new political era in the Balkan country.
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 Vu\u010di\u0107\u2019s SNS.
The results will be watched across the world as part of 10 pivotal days of elections<\/a> 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<\/a> that have rocked cities across the continent.
As people waited for the election results to come in, speculation had begun to swirl online about whether Vu\u010di\u0107 would seek to hold on to power regardless. His swift admission of defeat, however, was reminiscent of his ally, Viktor Orb\u00e1n<\/a>, in neighbouring Hungary six months ago, fuelling hopes of a democratic resurgence to central Europe.
The high-stakes election in the EU-candidate country traces back to November 2024, when a concrete canopy collapsed at the Novi Sad<\/a> railway station, killing 16 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 Vu\u010di\u0107, the increasingly authoritarian leader<\/a> 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 250 candidates for the 250-seat parliament, ranging from academics to athletes and farmers, as they called on voters to back their push to rebuild Serbia\u2019s economy and restore its democracy.
The campaign pitted them against the political monolith of Vu\u010di\u0107\u2019s SNS party, leaving them 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.
Vu\u010di\u0107 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 increase pensions and public sector salaries, Vu\u010di\u0107 sought to present himself as a leader capable of walking the diplomatic tightrope between the country\u2019s ties with the west, and 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 Vu\u010di\u0107 strongholds and going door-to-door as they sought to pitch themselves<\/a> as the anti-establishment candidates and to rally voters behind their slogan of \u201cSerbia or Mafia?\u201d
The message was reiterated on Sunday as Dejan Bodiroga, a candidate on the Student List and the Euroleague Basketball president, cast his ballot in Belgrade.
\u201cToday, above all, Serbia is fighting for freedom and for the return of a country that has been hijacked,\u201d Bodiroga told reporters. \u201cSerbia is voting today to decide which direction it will take \u2013 towards the future or the past.\u201d
In the lead-up to Sunday\u2019s 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 Ra\u0161a Nedeljkov of the election monitory CRTA, who said that \u201ca large number of irregularities continue to be recorded, while violent incidents outside polling stations are also becoming increasingly frequent.\u201d<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vu\u010di\u0107\u2019s 12-year reign looks to have been ended by record turnout of voters in election provoked by student-led protestsFollow the reaction to the result with our liveblogThe long-serving leader of Serbia, Aleksandar Vu\u010di\u0107, has conceded defeat, ushering in a seismic political shift after a historic election that saw \u200bthe increasingly authoritarian leader pitted against a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":228729,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}