BELGRADE, SERBIA — Aleksandar Vučić, Serbia's dominant political figure for more than a decade, conceded defeat Sunday in a parliamentary election that handed control of the country to the student-led movement that spent nearly two years trying to drive him from power.

"We still do not have final results, [but] on the basis of a sample ... it is clear that we have lost these elections," Vučić said as early counts rolled in. Preliminary figures reported by Euronews showed the opposition Student List winning roughly 52% of the vote to about 32% for Vučić's Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), putting the Student List on track for 135 to 140 of the 250 seats in parliament against roughly 105 for the SNS.

A revolt born from tragedy

The vote was the culmination of a protest movement that began after a concrete canopy collapsed at the railway station in Novi Sad in November 2024, killing 16 people. The disaster, which many Serbians blamed on corruption and shoddy construction tied to government-linked contractors, triggered what grew into nearly two years of student-organized marches, blockades and strikes across the country, according to Al Jazeera. Vučić called the snap election in September in an attempt to settle the standoff at the ballot box.

It did not go the way he planned. Turnout reached nearly 70%, the highest since the breakup of Yugoslavia, as voters delivered what CBC News described as an end to his long grip on power, and what Euronews called a political earthquake rejecting the model that has dominated Serbian politics for more than a decade.

"WE STILL DO NOT HAVE FINAL RESULTS, [BUT] ON THE BASIS OF A SAMPLE ... IT IS CLEAR THAT WE HAVE LOST THESE ELECTIONS."

Vučić, 56, has been at the center of Serbian politics since the 1990s, rising from the nationalist Serbian Radical Party to found the SNS in 2008. He served as defense minister, then prime minister starting in 2014, before winning the presidency in 2017 and again in 2022 with 58% of the vote. His government steered Serbia toward EU membership talks while maintaining close ties with Russia and China, a balancing act critics said increasingly relied on control of courts, media and state contracts to stay in power.

Accounts of his exact title differ in Sunday's coverage — some outlets describe him as a defeated candidate for prime minister, others as an outgoing president — reflecting the fluid, fast-moving nature of a result still being finalized overnight.

Western governments, which have watched two years of demonstrations unfold with a mix of caution and sympathy for protesters' corruption complaints, had largely refrained from commenting before the vote. The scale of Sunday's result is likely to force a quick response from Brussels, which has courted Serbia as a candidate for EU membership even as it has criticized Vučić's record on media freedom and the judiciary.

What's next

The Student List's apparent majority sets up a transfer of power that would have seemed unthinkable even a year ago, when Vučić's party controlled nearly every lever of Serbian government. How quickly a new government can be formed, and whether the SNS challenges the preliminary tallies, remained unclear as final official results were still being compiled.

For the students who organized the blockades that began in Novi Sad, Sunday's count was being treated as vindication two years in the making — proof that the movement had out-organized the machine that once seemed untouchable.