Vucic Names Election Month: October or November
Serbia's president said in an Axel Springer podcast that the vote will most likely be in October or early November, and that he would concede losing by half a percentage point.
President of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic said the country’s elections will most likely be held in October or early November. He made the remark on the podcast “MD Meets,” hosted by Mathias Doepfner, CEO of Axel Springer, and Serbian outlets picked it up Sunday evening, August 9: Novosti at 7:18 p.m., B92 eleven minutes later.
Before this statement, the president had been giving the public a deadline rather than a calendar. In Belegis he spoke of a vote within three months at the most, and before that, of calling the election within a day or a week. Naming an actual month is new.
“In any case, we will see what the people of Serbia decide. It will most likely happen either in October or early November,” Vucic said.
The wording is still conditional, with two possible windows and the word “most likely,” but the shift is visible: from a three month range down to a single month, with a possible spillover into the first days of the next.
How much time is really left before the vote?
If the vote is held in October, less than three months separate this statement from election week, the same span the president had mentioned in Belegis. That means the decision to call the election does not fall in autumn but in the weeks ahead, and under the Constitution, parliamentary elections are called by the president of the Republic.
The practical consequence is that summer is no longer politically idle. Putting together candidate lists, collecting signatures and negotiating coalitions all have to happen before the deadline formally opens, since once the election is called, those steps run on fixed statutory timelines with no room for delay.
Does the president believe polls that don’t favor him?
In the same conversation, Vucic spoke about the strength of the so called Students’ List and did not dispute its claims of being in the lead.
“Today, the other side, the so called ‘Students’ List,’ say they’re in the lead. I believe them. We will, without doubt, have a very tough election campaign,” the president said.
An admission that a rival list is ahead rarely comes from a figure in power, let alone weeks before an election is called. In a campaign, a sentence like that works on two tracks: it removes the burden of being the favorite and mobilizes one’s own electorate with the message that victory is not guaranteed.
The second part of the statement concerns what comes after the vote, meaning the recognition of the result.
“If they win the election by one percent, by a 0.5 percent margin, I will immediately recognize it, confirm it and congratulate them. I haven’t heard that from the other side,” Vucic said.
With that, he named the tightest possible margin, half a percentage point, the kind of result that in Serbian election cycles usually ends not in a concession but in complaints, recounts and disputes over the voter roll. Vucic also noted he had not heard a similar pledge from his rivals, shifting the question of accepting results onto the other side.
The open question of the prime minister’s post
Asked whether he has ambitions to become prime minister and whether he is ready for it, Vucic said he first needs to talk with people in his party. The answer is neither confirmation nor denial but a postponement: the mandate holder is proposed only after the election anyway, and the decision rests with the party leadership.
He also said he had invited his political opponents to talks and dialogue, which they did not accept. That claim has followed the current government since the protests began and resurfaces every time an election date draws near.
The setting of the interview is not incidental. The podcast is hosted by the CEO of one of Europe’s largest publishing houses, and its audience is mostly foreign, so the message about accepting results and about a tough campaign is also aimed beyond Serbia, at countries watching the country’s election conditions.
What still remains unknown is the exact date. The president named a month but not a voting day, nor did he say when he will sign the decision calling the election. Until that signature, the math stays the same: an October vote means a campaign that starts before the end of August or in the first days of September.
