Vucic concedes Serbia’s election to the student list, while RTRS alone carries early precincts that briefly show him ahead

Full analysis

What happened Why it matters How each country tells it Where accounts conflict Room for disagreement Our assessment Sources and evidence

What happened

Aleksandar Vucic ended more than a decade as Serbia’s most influential politician the way few strongmen do: by walking into his party’s New Belgrade headquarters on Sunday night and saying he had lost. "We don’t yet have final results; based on the stratified sample it is clear that we lost these elections — the student-blockade list won, it will have between 135 and 140 mandates, we around 105, no one else entered parliament," RTRS quoted him. Zaxid.net carried the same estimate with the added line that "many will be surprised and will understand how much some people lied."

The 250-seat assembly he was surrendering went to the Student List. CeSID’s projection, carried by RTRS on 64.1 percent of the processed sample, gave it 52.2 percent and 139 mandates against United Serbia’s 39.3 percent and 104 — about 2.26 million votes to 1.7 million. Vucic’s own figures, 2.2 million to 1.72 million, pointed the same way. Turnout hit roughly 70 percent, the highest since Yugoslavia’s breakup in 1992, according to CeSID via RTRS, Ipsos and CeSID via Economx, and AFP via Zaxid; RIK’s partial official count stood at 64.89 percent by 6 p.m., against 51.93 percent at the same hour in December 2023. Eighteen lists fielded 2,418 candidates for 6.45 million registered voters at 8,392 polling stations. No other national list cleared the 3 percent threshold. Only minority lists joined the top two: the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians with three mandates, the Albanian coalition with two, Rasim Ljajić’s list with one and SDA Sandžak with one, per CeSID via RTRS — though Vucic put the Albanians at one seat and said not to hold him to the word.

Then the count produced the evening’s strangest moment. RIK began publishing its first precinct records around 9:15 p.m., and those first stations showed United Serbia ahead 54 percent to the Student List’s 36, with Ivica Dačić’s list at 3.7 — the projection momentarily inverted. Only RTRS carried this, and no headline in the set explains it. RIK president Vladimir Dimitrijević said results would appear successively as each record was scanned, so the early numbers reflect only the first stations in, not a national trend.

The list that beat Vucic grew from the movement that rose after the canopy of the Novi Sad railway station collapsed in November 2024, killing 16 people; the students who blamed state corruption turned their protests into a list of 250 candidates including former basketball player Dejan Bodiroga and former central bank governor Dejan Šoškić, Zaxid reported. On Sunday night Šoškić stood in the students’ headquarters saying, "I am proud. Thank you everyone. I expected such a convincing victory," Zëri reported, relaying RTK, as the room chanted "Victory, victory" and "Continue, continue." Hundreds gathered in central Belgrade with torches and car horns. Radomir Saičić told the crowd, "Tonight the voice of the people has been heard… tomorrow we build the future," Zaxid reported; RTRS carried his line that "no force is stronger than their will."

The day was not clean. CeSID received several hundred reports of possible irregularities — photographed ballots, group voting, identification problems — and CRTA found pressure on voters and workers plus ballot-secrecy breaches, Economx reported; voting was interrupted in Doljevac. After polls closed, reinforced police and gendarmerie surrounded the electoral commission and part of central Belgrade was cordoned off as hooded men crossed Terazije toward a pro-government gathering; the movement urged supporters to avoid such places. Vucic arrived at SNS headquarters with Republika Srpska president Milorad Dodik, RTRS reported, to the greatest interest ever, with at least 40 news crews.

Why it matters

The stakes are the end of a machine, not just an electoral defeat. The movement born of a rail-station tragedy has converted street protest into a projected absolute majority, and whoever forms the next government inherits a state whose police were deployed around its own election commission within hours of the vote. For Zaxid.net alone that is geopolitical news: it is the only outlet to foreground Vucic’s biography — Milošević’s information minister, Putin’s May 2025 host, leader of a Serbia that refused sanctions on Russia — so the result reads as a break in Moscow’s Balkan alignment. Economx frames it as institutional collapse, foregrounding turnout, thresholds, observer findings and the gendarmerie rather than any movement’s triumph. Zëri reads the same facts as liberation — the chanting students are the story, because Vucic’s departure was a Pristina goal. RTRS, the outlet closest to him in the set, reports straight arithmetic with the concession quoted in full. Serbia’s own public broadcaster, RTS, published a radio rundown previewing a day-after discussion, so no count or concession appears on it.

How each country tells it

• 🇷🇸
  Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) · Serbia · original reporting

  Serbia’s public broadcaster previews a day-after radio discussion of preliminary election results with the equality commissioner, treating the aftermath as domestic institutional housekeeping.
• 🇧🇦
  Radio Televizija Republike Srpske (RTRS) · Bosnia and Herzegovina · original reporting

  Republika Srpska’s public broadcaster runs a live results ticker built around CeSID’s projection and Vucic’s full concession, while also carrying the first official RIK precinct records that still show his list ahead.
• 🇽🇰
  Zëri · Kosovo · carries RTK

  Pristina’s Zëri leads with the Student List’s self-declared victory and Belgrade street celebrations, reading Vucic’s defeat as liberation news.
• 🇭🇺
  Economx · Hungary · original reporting

  A Hungarian outlet records the defeat of Budapest’s Balkan partner through turnout statistics, observer reports of irregularities, and the collapse of an entrenched machine.
• 🇺🇦
  Zaxid.net · Ukraine · original reporting

  Ukraine’s Zaxid reads the vote as a front in the wider confrontation with Moscow, casting Vucic as a longtime Russian partner and the Student List as the force that broke his machine.

Where accounts conflict

The central facts are agreed, but two points deserve separation. The Albanian coalition’s seat count is unresolved: CeSID via RTRS gives it two mandates, while Vucic, both in RTRS and in Economx’s relay, says one, adding "don’t hold me to my word." Both are preliminary, so this may be the count moving rather than a dispute, but the reporting leaves it open, and Economx omits Ljajić’s list entirely. The larger divergence sits inside RTRS alone: its ticker reports the first official RIK precincts showing United Serbia ahead, the only hard count against every projection and concession in the set, and no other outlet carries or explains it. RIK’s stated method — publishing each scanned record as it arrives — makes those figures a snapshot of the first stations, not a competing result, but it stands without a second account.

Room for disagreement

The strongest case against a settled outcome is that the concession rests on a projection while every institution that will certify the result remains in Vucic’s hands. RIK’s first precinct records, carried by RTRS, have United Serbia ahead — the only official count in the set, however early. CeSID’s hundreds of irregularity reports and CRTA’s findings of pressure on voters, as Economx relayed them, are exactly the material for turning defeat into a contested count, and that contest would run through the police already around the commission. Vucic conceded the election, not the state. The counter, on the same record: he delivered the concession himself, from his own headquarters, unequivocally, with forty cameras rolling.