Vučić Concedes Defeat: The Student List Takes a Majority in Serbia's Parliament - the End of an Era in the Balkans?

At 9:30 p.m., from SNS headquarters in New Belgrade, Aleksandar Vučić spoke a sentence few expected to hear from him: "It is clear that we have lost this election." According to his list's sample count, the Student List will have between 135 and 140 seats in the 250-seat parliament. "Aleksandar Vučić - United Serbia" - around 105.

He read out the figures himself. Around 1,720,000 votes for his list, around 2,200,000 for the students. The independent CeSID and Ipsos projection is even starker: Student List 52.9 percent, Vučić 38.8. There were 6,451,292 eligible voters, 2,418 candidates on 18 lists, and turnout by 7 p.m. was 67.7 percent according to Ipsos. For comparison, in the 2023 election the SNS won 46.75 percent and 129 seats.

According to Vučić, the parliament will also include the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians with three seats and one seat each for the Albanians and, as he put it, "I think the SDA". And he immediately added: "Don't hold me to that."

Concession and threat in the same breath

The speech was not calm. Vučić congratulated Nataša Kandić, claiming that "her politics won" and did so "with enormous foreign support". He called journalists from N1 and Nova S "scum". He said he expected to be prosecuted over the "sound cannon", an accusation he calls a fabrication.

At the same time, he promises there will be no appeals, complaints or blocking of the verification of mandates. "Let them consider this the recognised results of the election," he said, adding that the new majority can constitute parliament within 10 to 15 days and form a government "whatever kind it wants". Then he said the sentence worth remembering: "We will defeat this evil sooner than they think." It did not sound like a farewell.

Election day was no celebration

The Interior Ministry said that in Lazarevac, outside SNS offices, a group of people attacked police with stones and fireworks, injuring two officers. The president of the Republic Electoral Commission, Vladimir Dimitrijević, reported that in Mladenovac unknown persons burst into a care home for the elderly, which was also a polling station, and pressured bedridden residents. The pro-government side, meanwhile, claimed that Vučić's mother, Angelina, was attacked in Vračar. Each side counted its own incidents - and the voters had their say.

What the region sees

It is telling where Vučić's list did not budge. In Kumanovo, according to published results, his list got 487 votes and the students 35. In Bijeljina, 1,543 to 335. Serbs outside Serbia stayed with Vučić - Serbia did not.

Vučić himself announced there would be "changes in relations with Republika Srpska and with Sarajevo". EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos has already congratulated the students, saying that "a new chapter can begin for Serbia", and Montenegrin Prime Minister Milojko Spajić also sent his congratulations. Vučić, for his part, warned that by March or April Serbia will introduce sanctions against Russia.

For Macedonia the question is a practical one. Vučić was one of the three leaders pushing "Open Balkan" together with Skopje and Tirana. Will the new government in Belgrade keep the initiative - or does it leave together with the man who made it his own?

The students won the street, and now parliament too. But a machine built over more than a decade does not vanish in one evening, and its architect said as much that very night: "From tonight we start preparing." How fast does a winning list become a government - and will it stay the same once it takes over the institutions?