Serbia votes in election pitting its longtime leader against student movement | Election news

Polls show populist leader Aleksandar Vucic in a tight race against the anti-corruption and anti-repression movement.

Serbs have started voting in parliamentary elections amid a mass student protest movement that seeks to oust longtime populist leader Aleksandar Vucic, who held power as prime minister and then president for more than a decade.

Sunday’s snap elections, called by Vucic in September, follow nearly two years of student-led protests who have accused the government of corruption and governing for those in power rather than the people. The movement was sparked by the death of 16 people when the canopy of a train station collapsed in the city of Novi Sad in 2024.

Since then, students have gained widespread support.

A defeat for Vucic would mark a profound political change in this Balkan country of six million inhabitants and would recall the defeat of Hungarian Viktor Orban in April.

But Vucic, who resigned as president in September to run again for prime minister, is a strong incumbent. Many voters thank him for bringing Serbia out of economic obscurity and “orchestrating a period of lasting modernization.”

During the campaign, Vucic promised higher pensions and salaries in the public sector, investments in public health care and subsidies for young couples. He has balanced closer ties with China, a major investor, and Russia, Serbia’s traditional ally and main supplier of natural gas, while leaving the door open to membership in the European Union.

But relations with the EU have deteriorated under his leadership. The bloc is increasingly frustrated by the lack of reforms regarding the justice system, rule of law and corruption.

The Student List movement’s agenda focuses on eradicating corruption and improving education, while revealing little about its international ambitions.

Its list of 250 largely unknown candidates, including university professors, actors and farmers, is headed by cardiologist Ilija Srdanovic.

His campaign is more about ending corruption, restoring the rule of law and rebuilding institutions than issues such as Russia, EU membership or normalizing relations with Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008, said Jelena Vasiljevic, a senior researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory at the University of Belgrade.

“The political dynamic has changed fundamentally,” she told Al Jazeera.

Young people, long considered the most politically disengaged group in the country, have become the core of the largest social mobilization in decades, she said.

The turnout will be decisive, Vasiljevic said.

Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) retains a disciplined electoral core, supported by a clientelist model of government in which goods and services are exchanged for political support, she said. The Student List must not only unite voters favorable to the opposition, but also mobilize habitual non-voters and undecided voters.

Opinion polls predict a close race.

An Ipsos poll released Thursday suggested the SNS would win 47 percent of the vote, compared to 40 percent for students, although other polls put students first.

Rights groups and activists said the crackdown had worsened since the collapse of the station canopy, widely blamed on government corruption.

Around 150,000 supporters of the student movement gathered in central Belgrade on Thursday.

Vucic and his party have repeatedly denied their opponents’ accusations of repression, corruption and espionage.

The former president claims the students are funded by foreign agents in Croatia and Montenegro, an accusation the students deny.

Polling stations opened at 7:00 a.m. (06:00 GMT) and closed at 8:00 p.m. (19:00 GMT) and the first indications of results are expected around two hours later.