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Former Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has acknowledged defeat in a snap parliamentary election, handing power to a student-led protest movement that spent nearly two years in the streets trying to push him out.

Getting into it: Vucic said his party’s own projections show the Student List taking between 135 and 140 seats in Serbia’s 250-seat parliament, with his Serbian Progressive Party, known as SNS, landing around 105 and no other party getting in. He put the vote count at roughly 2.2 million for the students and 1.7 million for SNS. “It is clear that we have lost these elections,” Vucic said.

The concession came only about an hour and a half after polls closed, though Vucic still blamed the loss on an “American deep state,” meddling from European countries he wouldn’t name and Serbia’s independent press. Turnout surged, with 64.9% of voters casting ballots two hours before polls closed, and monitors expected it to reach around 70%, a level Serbia hasn’t seen since 2000.

The protest movement started after a concrete canopy at a train station in Novi Sad collapsed in November 2024, killing 16 people, and protesters blamed corruption tied to the station’s renovation. Vucic has run Serbia since his party took power in 2012, serving as prime minister from 2014 and as president from 2017, and he quit the presidency last month to run for prime minister again. Despite its name, the Student List didn’t put any students on the ballot, instead running doctors, athletes, actors, farmers and academics on a slate led by cardiologist Ilija Srdanovic. Its platform calls for ending the government’s grip on state TV, pulling party loyalists out of the top jobs at state-run companies and getting rid of officials who went after protesters.

Tens of thousands of people poured into the streets of Belgrade, Novi Sad and other cities after the announcement, honking horns, setting off fireworks and chanting that Vucic was gone. The win came despite independent monitors reporting dozens of irregularities during the day, including voters photographing their ballots and attempted vote buying, and despite Vucic’s endorsement from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This all comes six months after Vucic’s close ally Viktor Orban lost power in neighboring Hungary.