Aleksandar Vučić, the President of Serbia, has won every election he has participated in since 2012, but on Sunday, a student-led movement has created a real opportunity to challenge his ruling party, the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), in the country's parliamentary elections.
New Polls and Social Changes
A poll released on Tuesday by an independent polling agency shows that the student list has narrowly surpassed the Progressive Party with 44.5% to 42.7%. This is the first time in over a decade that an opposition list has led in a national pre-election poll.
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Kosta Golubović, a 21-year-old law student at the University of Novi Sad, said: "Generation Z and students are rising up and fighting for a government that invests in our future instead of actively harming us."
Protests and Reactions
The largest protest movement in modern Serbian history began in November 2024, when a newly established railway station in Novi Sad collapsed, killing 16 people, including two children. Memorials for the victims turned into widespread protests that led to the ousting of the former Prime Minister due to the government's denials of any wrongdoing. The protests continued with massive crowds, peaking in March 2025 with a gathering in Belgrade that attracted over 325,000 participants.
An analyst named Djurde Vukadinović from the "New Political Thinking Institute of Serbia" pointed out that the numbers published in the poll are merely a reflection of the current situation and not a prediction of the future. He also added that due to the government's intense and nearly hysterical reactions to his previous findings, he initially did not intend to publish these results.
The Progressive Party, which has acted as an undeniable Western partner in the Balkans for 14 years, has consistently attacked independent polls, labeling them as "fake researchers."
However, the student list views the polls as a result of several months of door-to-door campaigning across the country and also reflects the resilience of youth that older opposition parties may lack.
Golubović continued: "We have energy. We did not accept that this is a lost cause or that there are dead zones we have not approached."
Vučić, who has been in power for 12 years and is running for Prime Minister in the upcoming elections, has also taken his campaign to the streets, sometimes attending rallies himself and performing local songs on his TikTok account.
His advertising strategies include unconventional promotions, one of which features him appearing as a restaurant waiter taking orders from a Serbian family. These ads seem aimed at attracting the attention of ordinary people.
If the student list wins the elections, they will have to face a fully entrenched system and bureaucracy, which could be very challenging. At the same time, Vučić and his party's victory will also come with its own set of challenges.
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