Serbia votes as student movement challenges Vučić's party

Belgrade — Serbians voted on Sunday in what France 24 described as the country's most contested parliamentary election in more than 14 years, with a student-led movement mounting the strongest challenge yet to the party of veteran leader Aleksandar Vučić.

Eighteen electoral lists are competing for the 250-member parliament, but polls suggest the race is effectively a referendum between Vučić's right-wing Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and the youth-backed Students' List. According to Al Jazeera, one Ipsos poll published on Thursday put the SNS on 47 percent to the students' 40 percent, though other surveys placed the students ahead.

The snap vote, called by Vučić in September, follows nearly two years of protests triggered by the 2024 collapse of a train station canopy in Novi Sad that killed 16 people — a disaster protesters blamed on corruption and negligence. The movement's final pre-election rally in Belgrade drew around 150,000 people, according to an independent protest monitor cited by The Hindu.

Vučić, 56, resigned the presidency in September to run for prime minister after two near-full terms as head of state. His campaign promised higher pensions, public sector pay rises and healthcare investment. The Students' List fields 250 largely unknown candidates — professors, athletes, farmers and artists, led by cardiologist Ilija Srdanovic — under a "we know how" slogan promising to fight corruption and rebuild institutions.

The campaign has been marked by tension. Monitors have raised concerns over detentions, government control of media and reported surveillance of activists, and 24 Serbian civil society groups warned days before the vote that conditions for free and fair elections were lacking. Vučić has repeatedly denied accusations of repression and corruption, and claims the students are funded by foreign agents — a charge they deny. He has said his side would concede defeat, but also warned that protests alleging fraud after an SNS win would be quashed.

Polling stations opened at 7am and close at 8pm local time, with first indications of results expected about two hours later. The state election commission is not expected to release the official tally before Monday. ACLED analyst Magda Anastasijevic told France 24 that electoral violence has been rising in Serbia and could escalate, "particularly if the results are disputed." The next marker is Monday's count — and, if it is close, the days that follow.