Serbia votes in election pitting longtime leader against student movement
Polls show populist leader Aleksandar Vucic in a tight race against the anticorruption and anti-authoritarian movement.
Serbians are voting in parliamentary elections amid a mass student protest movement that seeks to oust longtime populist leader Aleksandar Vucic, who has held power as prime minister and then president for more than a decade.
The snap elections, called by Vucic in September, follow almost two years of student-led demonstrations against perceived corruption and creeping authoritarianism, triggered by the deaths of 16 people when a train station canopy collapsed in the city of Novi Sad in 2024.
A loss for Vucic would mark a profound political shift in the Balkan country of some 6 million people, reminiscent of the defeat of Hungary’s Viktor Orban in April.
But relations with the EU have frayed under his leadership, with the bloc growing increasingly frustrated over a lack of reforms addressing the judiciary, the rule of law and corruption.