Serbia voter turnout highest in decades as students oppose longtime leader

Key points

• Serbia's snap parliamentary election on Sunday drew 64.9 percent turnout by 17:00 GMT, the highest since Yugoslavia broke up in 1992.
• A student-backed movement, the Student List – Students Win, is challenging Aleksandar Vucic's Serbian Progressive Party, which has governed since 2012.
• Election watchdogs reported intimidation, ballot secrecy failures and about 260 potential irregularities, and police deployed near the election commission's Belgrade headquarters.

Polls closed in Serbia's snap parliamentary election on Sunday at 8pm local time (19:00 GMT), with the highest voter turnout in decades. The vote will decide whether Aleksandar Vucic's Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), in power since 2012, holds office against a student-backed movement that grew out of nationwide anticorruption protests.

The State Election Commission said turnout reached 64.9 percent by 17:00 GMT, the highest since the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1992. The commission noted that higher turnout does not show which side gained support. About six and a half million people were eligible to vote for 250 parliamentary seats, with 18 electoral lists competing; 126 seats are needed for a majority.

Reports of intimidation and irregularities

The independent watchdog CRTA said its observers recorded pressure on voters or election workers at almost a third of the 500 polling stations it monitored, and reported failures to protect ballot secrecy. CeSID, another monitoring group, had received about 260 reports of potential irregularities by 5pm (16:00 GMT), including ballot photography, group voting and identification problems.

In Belgrade, police in riot helmets and carrying shields deployed near the election commission's headquarters, where roads were closed and barricades put up. City prosecutors appealed on Sunday for everyone involved in the election to avoid violence.

the highest since the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1992

— the State Election Commission

Background to the vote

The election follows nearly two years of student-led protests that began after a railway station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad in November 2024, killing 16 people. Demands for accountability widened into a movement against alleged government corruption and repression; Vucic and the SNS deny the accusations.

The Student List – Students Win fields candidates from professions including medicine and education, many without political experience, and campaigns for stronger institutions and an end to corruption. Some established opposition parties backed the students instead of fielding their own candidates. Vucic resigned as president in September to run for prime minister, promising higher pensions, public-sector wages and investment; supporters credit his rule with modernising the economy.