BELGRADE -- Incumbent Aleksandar Vucic is set to win Serbia’s presidential vote and his ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) appears in line to win the most votes in parliamentary elections, according to post-vote projections.
The National Electoral Commission said it will not announce preliminary results or hold a news conference on election night, April 3. This is the first time that the highest electoral body has not announced the results on the evening of an election day.
The deadline for announcing the final results is April 7.
Pollsters Ipsos and CeSID said late on April 3 that, based on a sample of the partial polling station count, Vucic would gain 59.8 percent in the presidential vote, with opposition candidate Zdravko Ponos set to get 17.1 percent.
The pollsters projected that the SNS would receive 43.6 percent of votes, while the United for Victory opposition alliance is set to finish second with 12.9 percent in the vote for parliament.
SNS's coalition partner, the Socialist Party of Serbia, took 11.6 percent of the votes.
The NADA coalition was projected to have 5.4 percent, while the We Must! coalition has 4.3 percent, Dveri has 4 percent, and Zavetnici has 3.9 percent.
Vucic declared victory in a televised speech, saying he had won 60 percent of the vote, or more than 2.2 million votes out of Serbia’s 6.5 million registered voters.
Earlier in the day, the country’s election commission estimated a turnout of 58-60 percent, substantially higher than the 48.8 percent reported in the 2020 parliamentary vote. Officials said long lines remained at some polling stations as of 8 p.m. and that those people would be allowed to vote.
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Many Ballots, Few Surprises Expected In Serbian Elections
At a news briefing, election officials said the process had been carried out “without major problems” and in a “democratic manner.”
They added, though, that there had been clashes between "different party activists" at some polling stations and urged all political parties to remain "calm" and conduct any activities peacefully."
The nongovernmental Center for Research, Transparency, and Accountability (CRTA) said its observers submitted five criminal complaints to authorities over “irregularities.”
The issues included the buying of votes at the polling stations, keeping parallel voter lists, violating the secrecy of the ballot, recording events at polling stations, as well as the presence of unauthorized persons at polling stations.
The elections were monitored by more than 4,000 observers from the CRTA and CeSID nongovernmental organizations, as well as delegations from the European Parliament, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, and the European Network of Election Observation Organizations.
Five years after winning his first term as president, Vucic remains the dominant force in Serbia, preaching peace and stability at a time when Europe is being rocked by its biggest conflict since the end of World War II with Russia's war against Ukraine.
But his critics complain he has tightened his grip on power through his control of the media and government to a point where a survey last month by the pollster Demostat showed 43 percent of the country doesn't believe the elections will be free or fair.
"In recent years, the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) has steadily eroded political rights and civil liberties, putting pressure on independent media, the political opposition, and civil society organizations," Freedom House said in its latest assessment of Serbia, which it ranked 62nd out of 100 nations in its freedom index for 2021.
Vucic's main opponent was Ponos -- a retired general who emerged as a surprise candidate fielded by the country's pro-European Union opposition camp.
SEE ALSO: With New Tactics And New Blood, Serbia's Opposition Is Trying To Become Relevant AgainThe 60-year-old Ponos "is a candidate of the center-right and it seems that the opposition wanted to find an individual that can be a good candidate for what's considered the political mainstream in Serbia, which leans more to the right," said Bojan Klacar, the managing director of the Belgrade-based Center For Free Elections and Democracy polling agency.
That mainstream, however, appears to have not have voted for a change in leadership at the presidential level, or in the national legislature even with the government on the back foot after a number of controversies in recent months.
Prior to the vote, a poll from the Belgrade-based Institute for European Affairs predicted that Vucic would win in the first round by taking 60 percent of the vote, with Ponos a distant second with 18 percent.
A poll by the Institute for European Affairs, had indicated the new parliament -- comprised of 250 seats -- would likely comprise four or potentially five parties: the ruling SNS with 57 percent; United for Victory with 19 percent; the Socialist Party of Serbia with 6.6 percent; We Must! (Moramo!) with 5.7 percent. The national-conservative NADA coalition is hovering around the 3 percent threshold, so the party could just scrape through.
Such a result would be massive for SNS, as it would be the first time the party had crossed the 50 percent threshold.