Serbia’s Student List wins as Vučić concedes defeat

Serbia’s student-backed Student List won a parliamentary election, and President Aleksandar Vučić conceded defeat, projecting that the slate would take between 135 and 140 of the 250 seats. The result ends the Serbian Progressive Party’s hold on power after 14 years, though the final vote count and certified seat distribution were not reported in the election-night accounts. Vučić said his party had lost and estimated that it received about 1.7 million votes, compared with roughly 2.2 million for the Student List. Separately, CeSID and Ipsos projected the Student List would win around 140 seats, based on 98.8% of votes counted. That projection would give it enough seats to govern alone. Both figures were preliminary: Vučić’s estimates were his party’s projections, while the seat count was an election-monitoring and polling projection. The election followed two years of protests that began after a concrete canopy collapsed at a railway station in Novi Sad in 2024, killing 16 people. Protesters demanded accountability and action against corruption, which they linked to the disaster. The Student List’s campaign drew on those demands, presenting itself as a nonpartisan effort to...