Six million voters were summoned to the polls on Sunday to renew the 250 seats of the National Assembly (narodna skupština), the unicameral parliament of the Republic of Serbia.
- Shortly after 9:30 p.m., the outgoing president and longtime heavyweights of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, conceded defeat. According to projections by the independent organization CRTA, the Student List had won 51% of the votes (138 seats), followed by Vučić’s SNS list with 40% (104 seats). The other parties – excluding national minorities – failed to cross the 3% threshold required to win seats. The Student List would thus hold the absolute majority of seats needed to govern alone.
- Voter turnout reached a level unseen since the fall of Yugoslavia, with 67.8% (+12 points) of eligible voters having cast their ballots by 7 p.m. By all accounts, the student movement managed to mobilize a substantial number of voters dissatisfied with Aleksandar Vučić’s governance and his backers. Throughout the day, extremely long queues were observed both within the country and among the sizable Serbian diaspora.
- This election was the first to be organized after more than two years of student protest movements, against a backdrop of corruption accusations against Aleksandar Vučić and his party. The SNS’s dominance of the Serbian political system since 2012 has been accompanied by a gradual rollback of democratic norms. In particular, elections held over the past decade have been marred by recurring irregularities, including inaccurate electoral rolls, violence, and pressure on observers and journalists.
- This day of voting was also marked by numerous irregularities and incidents of aggression, which non-partisan organizations such as CRTA and CeSID have reported. The European Union also dispatched a team of observers on site. For example, CRTA estimated that people could vote without valid documents in 13% of the polling stations observed, while CeSID counted more than 300 irregularities.
The maps and charts below, produced exclusively by the European Union’s Election Bulletins team (BLUE) for Le Grand Continent, will allow you to follow the tally live.
The data come directly from the Republic of Serbia’s Electoral Commission.