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World

Serbia polls close with record turnout as monitors report intimidation and irregularities

Polls closed at 8pm local time on Sunday in Serbia's snap parliamentary election, with turnout at 64.9 per cent by 17:00 GMT — the highest since the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1992 — while election monitors reported pressure on voters and hundreds of possible irregularities.

By James Calloway · · 1 min read

Voters cast ballots at a Serbian polling station with ballot boxes in a school hall
Photo: Makedonski Portal

Polls closed at 8pm local time (19:00 GMT) on Sunday in Serbia’s snap parliamentary election, which saw the highest voter turnout in decades, with a student-backed movement seeking to unseat long-time leader Aleksandar Vucic.

The State Election Commission said voter turnout had reached 64.9 per cent by 17:00 GMT, the highest since the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1992, Al Jazeera reported. The higher turnout does not show which side gained support.

Sunday’s voting was also marked by reports of intimidation and procedural problems. The Centre for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA), an independent election watchdog, said its observers recorded pressure on voters or election workers at almost a third of the 500 polling stations it monitored, and reported failures to protect ballot secrecy.

By 5pm (16:00 GMT), the Centre for Free Elections and Democracy (CeSID), an election-monitoring group, had received about 260 reports of potential irregularities, including ballot photography, group voting and difficulties with identification checks.

The vote will determine whether Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), which has governed since 2012, can retain power against a movement born from nationwide anticorruption protests. Those protests began after a railway station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad in November 2024, killing 16 people.

About six and a half million people were eligible to vote for 250 parliamentary seats, with 18 electoral lists competing; a majority of 126 seats is needed to form a government. First indications of the result were expected a few hours after polls closed.

Sources

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