Serbia election today: Vucic's SNS 47%, students 40% in last poll; polls close at midnight PKT

Serbia votes today, Sunday 25 October, in a snap parliamentary election that pits Aleksandar Vucic, in power for more than a decade, against a list of candidates put up by the student movement that has led protests for almost two years, Reuters reported in a story carried by Business Recorder.

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Who is running

• Serbian Progressive Party (SNS): Vucic's party. He resigned as president, the office he held after years as prime minister, to run for prime minister. He has promised higher pensions and public salaries, more spending on state health care and subsidies for young couples.
• Student List: about 250 mostly little-known candidates, including university professors, actors and farmers, led by cardiologist Ilija Srdanovic. It is campaigning on rooting out graft and improving schools.

An Ipsos poll published on Thursday put the SNS on 47% and the students on 40%; other polls have had the students ahead, so the race is close.

Why Serbia is voting

The protests began after 16 people were killed when a railway station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad in 2024. The station is on the Belgrade to Budapest line, a project Vucic championed, and protesters see the disaster as a symbol of corruption. The demonstrations grew into the biggest in a generation. Rights groups say repression has worsened since; Vucic and the SNS deny repression, corruption and spying on opponents, and Vucic says the students are funded by foreign agents in Croatia and Montenegro, which they reject.

"We stood against those who wanted to destroy Serbia," Vucic told supporters. Mario Bikarski of risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft called the vote a "watershed moment for the country".

Europe is watching

Vucic has kept close ties with China and Russia while keeping Serbia's EU bid alive. Relations with Brussels have soured over the courts, the rule of law and corruption; a Council of Europe delegation this month noted "hostile and aggressive rhetoric" against opponents. Reuters compares a student win to Viktor Orban's defeat in Hungary in April.

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