Vucic Hails Serb List's 10 Seats as Kurti Slips
Belgrade reacts to the Kosovo vote: Vucic touts a clear Serb List win, Elek awaits the final CIK count, and support for Kurti drops markedly.
- President Vucic said the Serb List won 42,159 votes in Serb communities, against 3,956 for a rival Serb list.
- Zlatan Elek said preliminary results gave the Serb List all 10 seats reserved for Serb representatives, but he is waiting for the final CIK count.
- With about 92 percent of polling stations counted, Self-Determination leads with 43.60 percent, well below its December result.
- Overall turnout was about 36 percent, lower than the 44.99 percent recorded in December.
Evening vote counting after the snap election for the assembly of the provisional Pristina institutions shifted the story from the morning’s victory declarations to concrete figures and the first reactions from Belgrade. President Aleksandar Vucic stressed a clear win for the Serb List over a rival Serb list, while Serb List leader Zlatan Elek announced all ten seats reserved for Serb representatives, with the caveat that the official statement of the Central Election Commission is still awaited.
Vucic distilled the result into a ratio he described as a defeat for the rival list in Serb communities. By his account, the Serb List took 42,159 votes, while the Serb list close to the Pristina authorities took 3,956, which he framed as ten to nil. Elek called the outcome a shared victory, saying it was a win for all Serb men and women, while noting that the final seat split depends on the remaining polling stations.
Why is the Serb List waiting for the final CIK count?
The caution around the figure of ten seats is not accidental. The experience from February, when the final seat allocation differed from preliminary projections, taught Serb representatives to tie celebration to official rather than working data. Elek therefore presented the preliminary result as the expected outcome, but stressed that the Serb List seeks final confirmation only from the CIK.
By the evening, the Central Election Commission in Pristina had processed about 92 percent of polling stations. By those figures, the balance of power across the whole territory looks like this:
- Self-Determination: 43.60 percent
- Democratic Party of Kosovo: 21.50 percent
- Democratic League of Kosovo: 17.97 percent
- Alliance for the Future of Kosovo: 7.23 percent
For Serb representatives, the decisive share of votes was gathered in the northern municipalities and the enclaves, where the Serb List is traditionally dominant and where the fate of the ten guaranteed seats is settled.
Kurti’s falling support and lower turnout
A second layer of the story concerns the erosion of support for Albin Kurti. Self-Determination remains the strongest single list, but a result of around 43 percent lags well behind December 2025, when the party won more than 51 percent of the vote. A drop of nearly ten percentage points at an election called early, after the assembly failed to elect a president by the constitutional deadline of April 28, weakens Kurti’s bargaining position as a new majority is assembled.
The weaker result is matched by lower turnout. About 36 percent of voters cast ballots, against 44.99 percent in December. The highest activity was recorded in Serb communities, where Ranilug (55.29 percent), Zubin Potok (55.26 percent) and Leposavic (54.23 percent) posted above-average turnout, further supporting the Serb List’s arithmetic of a full set of seats.
For Belgrade the message is twofold: a consolidation of the Serb electorate around a single list and, at the same time, the weakening of the main Pristina actor it will face in dialogue. Will confirmation of all ten seats in the final CIK report strengthen the Serb community’s position in the new convocation, or will the seat allocation still bring a surprise, as it did in February?
