Serbia's Aleksandar Vucic has conceded defeat to the student-led protest movement in Sunday's snap parliamentary election, ending more than a decade of dominance for his political bloc. Speaking from his party's election headquarters, Vucic said that on the basis of a sample, "it is clear that we have lost these elections, the Student List has won".

Projected seat counts

Vucic estimated that the Students' List would take between 135 and 140 seats in the 250-member National Assembly, compared with about 105 for his own list, with no other list entering parliament. An independent Ipsos/CeSID projection put the Students' List on 52.0% of the vote and 138 seats, against 39.3% and 104 seats for Vucic's list. A parliamentary majority requires 126 seats. Vucic stressed that final results were not yet available, and the projections are estimates, not a certified result from Serbia's Republic Electoral Commission.

Two years of protests

The snap elections, called by Vucic in September, came after almost two years of student-led demonstrations against perceived corruption and creeping authoritarianism, triggered by the deaths of 16 people when a train station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad in 2024. The students have since gained widespread support to become the greatest threat to Vucic since he first became prime minister in 2014 and then president in 2017.