Serbia's Student List wins an outright majority as Vučić concedes
The movement born from the Novi Sad canopy protests took 52.6% in Sunday's snap election, per the electoral commission (RIK), for a projected 140 of 250 seats. Vučić's United Serbia list got 39.2%. Turnout was 68.8%.
Serbia’s student movement has turned two years of street protest into a parliamentary majority. The Student List won Sunday’s snap election outright, and Aleksandar Vučić conceded defeat.
The Republic Electoral Commission’s results gave the Student List 52.65% with 8,135 of 8,392 polling stations counted. United Serbia, the list led by Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party, was on 39.2%. Turnout reached 68.8%, the highest in more than three decades.
The seat maths
Projections give the Student List 140 of the 250 seats, comfortably over the 126 needed to govern alone. United Serbia takes 103. The remaining seven go to minority lists: three for the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians, two for the Albanian coalition and one each for two Sandžak lists.
The movement began after the concrete canopy at Novi Sad railway station collapsed in November 2024, killing 16 people. Students led the protests that followed, and kept them going in towns across the country for almost two years.
What happens next
The list has not named a prime minister. The name most often mentioned is Ilija Srdanović, a cardiologist and professor at Novi Sad’s medical faculty who led the campaign.
The timetable is set by the constitution. The new assembly must sit within 30 days of the final results, and a government must be formed within 90 days after that.
There is another vote to come. Vučić resigned as president on 27 September when he called this election, and parliament speaker Ana Brnabić is acting head of state. An extraordinary presidential election has to be called by 27 December.
It was a big Sunday for ballot boxes: on the same day Brazilians in Portugal backed Lula by a wider margin than Brazil did.
Image: Dejan Krsmanovic / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
