President Aleksandar Vucic on Sunday evening declared "an absolute victory" of his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and its coalition partners in the snap parliamentary elections in the country, after the closing of polling stations throughout Serbia.

Vucic said that his party also won the highest number of ballots in the elections for the city council in the capital city of Belgrade.

According to Ipsos pollster's report, the ruling SNS and its two coalition partners — the Socialist Party of Serbia and the Serb radical Party (SRS) led by Vojislav Seselj, a war crimes convict, is likely to have 128 seats in the 250-seat national parliament.

Vucic said that the SNS won everywhere even more ballots than at the previous elections in 2022.

The Opposition slate called “Serbia Against Violence” mustered 29% of the vote, which means that it can count on 66 seats in the national legislature.

Belgrade City Assembly : SNS with nearly 40% of the vote

The SNS slate also won 38.5% of ballots cast for the city council in Belgrade, according to Vucic, while “Serbia Against Violence” follows with 35% of the support. NADA, a conservative coalition, won 6% of the vote for the Belgrade assembly.

Vojvodina

The 120-seat assembly in the province of Vojvodina will have between 67-69 deputies from the SNS-led coalition, while the Opposition's Serbia against Violence 28 or 29 seats, according to Vucic's statement.

Opposition: Voting marred by fearmongering, irregularities

The leader of the Opposition coalition “Serbia against Violence”, Miroslav Aleksic, said on Sunday evening that the process of elections was marred by irregularities and that for instance, 40,000 new identity cards had been issued for Belgrade just before the polls. He also commented that busloads of people from Bosnia and Herzegovina's Serb entity were transported to Belgrade to vote.

“It is absolutely clear that in no way the SNS won the Belgrade elections,” Aleksic said emphasising that the outcome would be challenged due to stealing of votes and the organised participation of SNS supporters in the elections.

Another leader of the Opposition coalition, Dragan Djilas, said that they would defend the will of citizens by all democratic means and announced possible protests.

The monitor mission of the CRTA centre said that the turnout at the eelctions was 59.1%, and that Vucic's coalition won 46.9% in the parliamentary polls, based on the returns from 95% of the ballots.

Serbia Against Violence won 23.1% of ballots.

The country's Electoral Commission said that it would provide preliminary results for all polling stations on Monday evening.

A total of 6,500,165 citizens in Serbia were eligible to vote in 8,273 polling stations.

The DSHV party of Croats in Serbia, led by Tomislav Zigmanov and the Bosniak party called “Justice and Reconciliation Party” (SPP), led by Usame Zukorlic, ran together in the snap polls.

This coalition of the two parties representing those two ethnic minorities collected the necessary number of signatures 5,000, to be able to run in the parliamentary elections.

An estimated 40,000 ethnic Croats live in Serbia.

The DSHV and the SPP parties also together participated in the elections for the 120-seat assembly of the province of Vojvodina.