Serbia Election: Student List Leads by 13.4 Points

The Republic Electoral Commission (RIK) announced that by noon it had processed 8,139 of 8,392 polling stations, about 97 percent, and that the Student List - Students Win has 2,246,796 votes (52.65 percent), while the “Aleksandar Vucic - United Serbia” list has 1,673,607 votes (39.22 percent). The gap is 13.43 percentage points, or 573,189 votes, with about 250 stations still to be counted.

In the 1:10 am update we published earlier, the split was 48.52 to 43.26, a gap of 5.26 points. The lead has more than doubled since then.

How has the count changed since morning?

The first update, released Sunday evening on the basis of 203 processed stations, showed the opposite order: United Serbia led with 54.69 percent and the Student List had 36.04. As the records came in, the picture turned around.

This morning’s updates were as follows:

• 7,926 stations (94.45 percent): Student List 2,116,719 votes (52.19 percent), United Serbia 1,602,913 (39.52 percent), “Ivica Dacic - Stability Factor” list 89,441 (2.21 percent). The gap was 513,806 votes, or 12.67 points. The previous morning update covered 7,807 stations.
• 8,077 stations: Student List 52.54 percent, United Serbia 39.29, Stability Factor 2.18, Authentic Right 0.82, European Serbia 0.28, with 1.29 percent of ballots invalid.
• 8,135 stations, with 257 left to count, according to Pink, which cited Tanjug: Student List 2,246,423 votes (52.65 percent), United Serbia 1,673,241 (39.22 percent), Stability Factor 92,532 (2.17 percent).
• 8,139 stations, according to Newsmax Balkans at noon: 2,246,796 and 1,673,607 votes, with the same percentages.

Pink and Newsmax Balkans thus report updates with different station counts, 8,135 and 8,139, and the Student List figure differs by 373 votes.

How many votes did the other lists get?

In the update covering 8,135 stations, based on figures carried by Pink, the remaining fifteen lists have the following votes:

• Authentic Right: 38,286 (0.90 percent)
• Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians: 34,755 (0.81)
• Albanian Coalition: 27,664 (0.65)
• Rasim Ljajic - Human: 20,305 (0.48)
• Bogoljub Karic - Movement of Serbia’s Forces: 19,508 (0.46)
• SDA of Sandzak: 12,348 (0.29)
• European Serbia: 12,041 (0.28)
• Usame Zukorlic - Movement for Unification: 11,605 (0.27)
• Russian Party: 6,344 (0.15)
• Party of Russian-Serbian Unity: 4,179 (0.10)
• Vladimir Gajic - Alternative for Serbia: 3,610 (0.08)
• Mother Serbia: 3,144 (0.07)
• Liberal Green Party: 2,604 (0.06)
• “Cale, This Is for You”: 1,950 (0.05)
• “I Choose Justice”: 1,158 (0.03)

Only lists with at least three percent of the vote take part in the allocation of seats, while national minority lists are covered by a natural threshold. Stability Factor, at 2.17 percent, stays below the cutoff.

How many seats are projected, and what does CRTA say?

RIK has not yet published a seat allocation. According to a projection by the Center for Free Elections and Democracy (CeSID) and the agency Ipsos, based on a 96 percent sample, the Student List gets 140 of the 250 seats in the National Assembly, United Serbia 103, the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians three, the Albanian Coalition two, and the Rasim Ljajic list and SDA of Sandzak one each. By the same projection, no other list has enough votes to enter parliament.

The program director of the organization CRTA, Rasa Nedeljkov, gave somewhat different figures in a preliminary assessment on election day, along with a range of seats:

“In other words, Student List - Students Win won 52.45 percent of the vote and will have between 136 and 140 seats in the Assembly, meaning the Student List will have an absolute majority to form a government on its own. The SNS list won 39.20 percent of the vote and will have between 101 and 105 seats.”

Nedeljkov also described the regional picture: the Student List has its biggest lead in Belgrade, a gap of about 31 percent, then in Vojvodina with 13, and in central and western Serbia with 11 each. Of the south and east of the country he said:

“The United Serbia list gained an advantage only in the south of Serbia, by about 8 percent, while in the east the result was practically tied, with a one percent advantage for the second-placed list.”

The same speaker called on political actors holding the highest state offices to announce their plans and not to “hold the public hostage again”.

Why do sources differ on turnout?

For the update covering 8,077 stations, two sources give different numbers of voters who turned out. N1 and Danas, citing RIK, report 4,211,957 voters, or 68.78 percent. Newsmax Balkans reports that for the same update RIK gave 4,127,456 voters, or 68.76 percent. The difference is 84,501 voters.

Other updates give 4,058,064 voters (68.73 percent) at 7,926 stations, according to Telegraf, and 4,269,403 voters (68.81 percent) at 8,135 stations, according to Pink.

What is happening with the RIK website?

The RIK website became unavailable on Sunday around 9:30 pm, soon after the first preliminary results were published. It is working again this morning, but the interactive municipality-level view of registered voters, turnout and processed stations shows zeros. RIK has not explained the cause or said when the view will work again.

At an extraordinary press conference on October 25 at 8:15 pm, RIK president Vladimir Dimitrijevic explained that records from polling stations are handed to local election commissions, scanned, statistically processed and immediately posted on the website, and that results are published in succession until the final ones are determined. The commission’s secretary, Srdjan Smiljanic, also attended. Dimitrijevic said this method of publication has been used since the 2023 elections, on the basis of ODIHR recommendations from 2022. All figures are preliminary, and RIK will determine the final results once the legal procedure is complete.

What is expected today?

The mission of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), led by Eoghan Murphy, has announced a press conference for 3 pm Belgrade time today, where it will present its preliminary findings and conclusions on the elections. A statement on those findings will be released at the same time. The mission consists of 14 experts from 12 countries in Belgrade and 30 long-term observers from 15 countries, with 300 short-term observers also planned. Delegations of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the European Parliament also monitored election day alongside ODIHR. The final report on the whole electoral process is published several months after it ends.