Serbia's student movement converted a disaster inquiry into a parliamentary majority

Aleksandar Vučić has conceded Serbia's parliamentary election after preliminary projections gave the student-backed list a governing majority. A representative CESID–IPSOS sample put the Student List on 138 of 250 seats and Vučić's Serbian Progressive Party on 104, with the remainder going to minority parties. Turnout approached 70%, the highest since Yugoslavia's break-up. Final official results are still pending.

The movement began after 16 people died when a railway-station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad in November 2024. Students treated the disaster not as an isolated engineering failure but as evidence of opaque contracting, weak accountability and state capture. Nearly two years of blockades and demonstrations expanded into the most serious challenge Vučić had faced since becoming prime minister in 2014 and president in 2017. The election converted that civic mobilisation into power without relying on an established opposition party.

The result is important beyond the arithmetic. Vučić dominated mainstream media and institutions while balancing Serbia among the European Union, Russia and China. The Student List assembled academics, professionals and public figures around democratic restoration and anti-corruption rather than a fully settled programme. That breadth helped it win; it will complicate governing. The coalition must choose a prime minister, preserve unity across 250 candidates and confront institutions shaped by twelve years of personalised rule. Its positions on EU membership and Kosovo remain less defined than its procedural demands.

A majority does not automatically dismantle state capture. Procurement files must be opened, prosecutors and media regulators made independent, and investigations insulated from the desire for political revenge. The movement's credibility came from insisting that the deaths in Novi Sad required traceable responsibility. Its test in office will be whether it builds institutions capable of applying that standard to allies as well as opponents. Serbia has produced an unusually clear demonstration that sustained protest can win an election; it has not yet demonstrated that a protest network can govern.