Serbia's Vučić Concedes Defeat to Student-Led Movement

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić conceded defeat on Sunday to the student-led protest movement in the country's parliamentary election, Reuters reported.

Late on Sunday, Vučić told the election result to supporters, speaking at his party's headquarters in Belgrade. "We still do not have final results... it is clear that we have lost these elections," he said, according to BBC News. He also said the conclusion rested on "a stratified sample," a statistical method that draws results from selected groups of polling places. Preliminary figures from Serbia's election commission indicated record high turnout.

Vučić called the early, or snap, parliamentary elections after two years of protests across Serbia. Those demonstrations were triggered by the 2024 collapse of a railway station canopy, an accident that killed 16 people. Students have been at the centre of the movement, and the vote was widely framed as a test of whether they could unseat him.

Before the vote, a survey published on Thursday put Vučić's party at 47 percent and the student movement at 40 percent, according to Sky News.