Serbians turned out in numbers unseen in more than three decades on Sunday, lining up for hours at polling stations in a snap parliamentary election that has become a referendum on Aleksandar Vucic's 14-year hold on power. By 6pm local time, roughly 65% of the country's 6.4 million registered voters had cast ballots — two hours before polls closed — surpassing the previous post-Yugoslav high of just over 61% set in 1993, according to France24 and the state election commission.

The vote pits Vucic's ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) against the Student List – Students Win, a slate of academics, doctors and artists with little to no political experience that emerged from two years of mass protests. Those demonstrations began after a railway station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad in November 2024, killing 16 people — a disaster widely blamed on corruption that triggered what observers call the largest protest movement since Slobodan Milosevic was ousted in 2000. Several established opposition parties stood aside entirely, urging supporters to back the students instead.

A country split over 14 years of SNS rule

Vucic resigned the presidency last month to lead the SNS ticket for prime minister, casting himself as the only leader capable of balancing Serbia's ties to the European Union and Russia while delivering higher pensions and wages. He has accused the student movement of plotting a "foreign-funded coup." At a Belgrade polling station, voter Marija Spasenovic told reporters the country "cannot continue as it was during the past 14 years," while student candidate Dejan Bodiroga said Serbia was "fighting for freedom and for the return of a country that has been hijacked," according to Al Jazeera.

"SERBIA IS VOTING TODAY TO DECIDE WHICH DIRECTION IT WILL TAKE — TOWARDS THE FUTURE OR THE PAST." — Aleksandar Vucic

The day was not free of tension. Independent monitor CRTA said its observers recorded pressure on voters or election workers at nearly a third of the 500 polling stations it watched, and the Centre for Free Elections and Democracy logged roughly 260 reports of irregularities, including ballot photography and group voting, by late afternoon. Riot police with shields cordoned off the election commission's Belgrade headquarters and a nearby pro-government encampment as polls closed, and the EU's ambassador said the bloc was "deeply concerned" by reports of violent incidents at several locations, per bne IntelliNews.

Eighteen lists are competing for 250 parliamentary seats, with 126 needed for a governing majority. A final pre-election rally in Belgrade on Thursday drew an estimated 150,000 people, and cars queued for hours at border crossings with Croatia, Hungary and Kosovo as members of the Serbian diaspora returned home to vote. Results were expected within hours of polls closing at 8pm local time, with the outcome set to determine whether Europe's longest-serving strongman survives the biggest electoral threat of his tenure — or whether a movement of first-time political candidates can actually convert record turnout into power.