Local elections taking place in ten Serbian municipalities were meant to be routine. Instead, for the first time in years, they are competitive and uncertain, as the seemingly untouchable SNS faces a credible challenger. All eyes are now on them as a dress rehearsal for the general elections expected within a year.
This Sunday, ten municipalities in Serbia head to the polls to elect their local governments. What might otherwise have appeared as routine local elections, in places where the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) has confidently held power for years, has taken on a different turn. The outcomes do not seem entirely predetermined and many observers argue that these elections are, for the first time since the SNS took power in 2012, genuinely competitive. It comes at a moment when international indices, such as V-Dem for 2026, classify Serbia as an electoral autocracy, a system where elections formally exist, but are so tightly controlled that genuine political change is highly unlikely.
The key difference in these highly consequential local elections is the emergence of a new political actor coalescing around the student movement, combined with broader civic mobilization that has reintroduced unpredictability into the system. It has taken shape over more than a year of sustained popular resistance, triggered by the canopy collapse at a train station in the city of Novi Sad on 1st November 2024, which killed 16 people. What began as a popular outrage over endemic corruption and the lack of accountability has evolved into a broader political awakening, one that has brought new actors onto the scene and reshaped the contours of Serbian politics.
Conspicuously, there are very few reliable public opinion polls published. But those that are available, along with internal party estimates and signals from the field, point in the same direction: the balance has tightened, and in some places, it may have tipped. These local elections are therefore an overture, a test run for national elections expected within a year.
Total Deployment
What is unfolding in these ten municipalities is not an election in the conventional sense, but rather a form of a total hybrid war by the regime against the voters and anyone perceived as the opposition. From the flat plains of Kula in Vojvodina, through the mining towns of Majdanpek and Bor in the east, to Bajina Bašta along the Drina and the forested hills of central Šumadija, these places share a common pattern: small, dispersed municipalities where the ruling SNS has long secured routine, landslide victories. Distance, fragmented terrain and weak local infrastructure make coordination and mobilization far more difficult for anyone without access to the state’s extensive resources.
Across all ten municipalities, the regime’s campaign follows an identical script. All local electoral lists are branded with the name of the President under the same template slogan: “Aleksandar Vučić – [Name of Municipality], Our Family!” All SNS lists are also placed first on the ballot in all ten locations, a standard tactic to maximize visibility and ease voter choice. The message is clear: every local election is personalized and it is one man, the President, against many. And anything but a 10:0 result for the SNS will be considered a defeat.
Since the stakes are so high, the regime has closed its ranks. The ruling party’s long-standing coalition with the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), is now for the first time running as a unified bloc rather than separately, bringing in even minor satellite parties that would otherwise struggle to pass the electoral threshold. Despite already holding majorities in many of these towns, the ruling bloc behaves as if every race is existential.
What followed is a full deployment of the state and para-state apparatus to secure the win and all public resources are activated at scale: asphalt is poured at accelerated speed onto long forgotten streets in small towns, promises of new infrastructure projects appear overnight. Government officials have descended on municipalities in waves: opening projects, distributing promises, offering better future. As reported by the news portal Mašina, in less than a month around 80 visits by high-ranking state officials were recorded across the ten municipalities. These included ministers of education, culture, defense, health, many senior public officials and the President himself.
Further manipulative strategies involve the use of children for campaign purposes, the president attributing to himself to care for children’s health care; „Phantom” lists, that have been deployed to confuse voters by imitating genuine opposition groups. In Kula, a pro-regime list named “Youth for Kula” closely mirrors the legitimate student-backed “Voice of Youth of Kula Municipality”, and threats of violence, including the release of intimate materials, image-based sexualized violence, targeting women in the opposition, also reported in Kula.
Alongside this visible layer runs a more dangerous, opaque one. Reports of pressure on public sector employees, irregularities in voter registries and organized voter migration suggest a deep level of coordination with the intent to manufacture a desirable electoral outcome. There is already evidence of procedural manipulation, parallel party networks and credible reports of voter intimidation, including threats from individuals with criminal backgrounds linked to the SNS.
“There will be no better electoral conditions,” said Raša Nedeljkov from CRTA (Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability), a Belgrade-based watchdog organization focused on electoral integrity and democratic governance. Despite this sobering assessment, he adds that the bottom line for the pro-democratic forces is “not about winning elections, but about defending the ability to change power through the ballot.”
As Nedeljkov points out, institutions are repurposed and multiple layers of the state apparatus, from the media to prosecutors and the police, are increasingly criminalized and aligned in ways that undermine free and fair elections. From prosecutors who turn a blind eye to video evidence of political bribery, to senior police officials who openly participate in or enable political pressure, all state resources have been put under the SNS control. In such an environment, “there is no single institutional safeguard that citizens can rely on, and they must be ready to defend their votes if need be” Nedeljkov added.
He also points to the emergence of a new practice, so-called phantom election observers. These are organizations and individuals that formally monitor the process but in practice interfere with and attempt to control it. He notes that this resembles tactics seen elsewhere, best monitored in Russia. The scale of this operation is striking as can be seen in the small municipality of Kula where, with just over 30,000 voters, as many as 22 observer missions have been registered.
On top of this, the regime’s control over the media is almost total. The president is effectively on constant live stream with a permanent presence that crowds out everything else.Smaller, local media outlets are being bought off at scale by SNS-linked actors, while new ones are mushrooming across municipalities where elections take place. They are all serving the same purpose: to replicate and reinforce a single, SNS-backed dominant narrative and push it onto the unsuspecting voters.
The Opposition Testing Ground
On the other side, these elections are also an experiment for the diverse group of opposition and pro-democracy actors owing to the fact that different configurations of political cooperation are emerging across these ten municipalities. This is particularly important with the view to the upcoming general elections as it offers a first real test of what might, and might not, work under current conditions.
At the core of these elections stands a new and, arguably, the strongest political actor: the student movement. While not formally organized as a party, student-backed initiatives are running across municipalities, most often as groups of citizens in a variety of configurations, sometimes independently, sometimes with tacit or open support from opposition parties. Their presence has reshaped the field, bringing new energy and mobilization capacity that traditional opposition actors have struggled to generate.
Around them, a broader ecosystem of opposition and pro-democracy actors is experimenting with different forms of cooperation. In some places, unified lists are formed to consolidate support; in others, multiple columns persist, reflecting both strategic disagreements and structural fragmentation. Locally rooted “groups of citizens” are playing a particularly important role, attempting to anchor resistance in community networks rather than party structures.
Irena Barbulović, a representative of the Ne dam/Nu dau environmental movement and a candidate on a student-backed local citizens’ list in Majdanpek, is one such example. Her organization rose to prominence by opposing harmful mining practices by Chinese companies and is now running for elections through a locally rooted, mobilization-focused campaign.
“The key shift may not be institutional, but psychological: people are less afraid and increasingly ‘know the trick’ of how manipulations work,” Barbulović explains. “Once voters understand the system, turnout becomes the most dangerous variable.” Which is why, she adds, the most important thing is to work directly with the people and educate them how to avoid the immense pressures they are facing.
Higher participation could disrupt the balance on which the system relies; lower turnout reinforces it. This is why, Barbulović argues, the regime’s goal is twofold: to secure votes for them and to scare opposition voters away from the polling stations.
Other commentators also agree that turnout will be decisive. The few available public opinion surveys, including data from a widely quoted Sprint Insight’s 2025 poll points to a similar conclusion: the electorate is more fluid than before and the coalition centered around SNS was losing by 10 percentage points to the loosely defined “student movement.” The numbers might have shifted but very few people have the exact figures.
Political consultant Dušan Milenković, who is also a part of the team behind Sprint Insight, says that the turnout with anything above 4 million voters could potentially tip the balance, and around 4.1 million represents a critical threshold for the regime change. As for public opinion research, he says the key trends remain unchanged and a majority of citizens in Serbia support political change, and a significantly larger share believes the country is moving in the wrong direction.
“That is the most we can reliably say about the trends at this point. And to reiterate what I have said earlier: there is currently no scenario in which Vučić’s movement wins more votes than the anti-regime bloc,” Milenković added confidently.
There are also grounds for cautious optimism. A significant share of citizens, including a notable portion of SNS voters, perceive corruption and personal economic conditions as their primary concerns, based on CRTA polls. This is something that the incumbent government simply cannot resolve and the people are aware of that.
Yet, as Nedeljkov argues, the regime has adapted to govern Serbia through elections themselves. For years, snap elections were used to catch the opponents unprepared and reset the political field. This is why the current unwillingness of the regime to call for snap elections is telling. Despite sustained pressure from last year’s protest movement, whose central demand was the calling of early general elections, the regime has so far resisted. This hesitation may signal a shift: a system built on constant electoral advantage may no longer be certain it can reproduce it. This is why the challenge for the opposition goes beyond just winning, it is ensuring that the electoral will is both expressed and then defended.
However, the turnout alone is not enough. As Nedeljkov argues, the starting point must be understanding the rules of the game, however flawed they may be. This is not only about winning elections, but about protecting the integrity of the electoral process itself. “That requires coordination, solidarity and mass mobilization,” he concluded.
Lastly, these local elections should offer clear lessons for the upcoming and potentially watershed general elections everyone is expecting. Different opposition strategies will be tested: unified fronts, parallel lists and citizen groups. However, their success will depend not only on the ability to turn discontent into votes, but on their readiness to defend those votes and the electoral results the day after.
Still, caution is needed when interpreting the results. As Aleksandar Ivković, Researcher at the Belgrade-based think-tank Center for Contemporary Politics notices, these elections are taking place in small and more rural municipalities, covering only around 4 percent of Serbia’s electorate. “The results, whatever they may be, cannot be directly projected to the national level,” he explains. Outcomes will depend not only on the number and type of lists, but also on the quality of campaigns, the strength of local candidates and other context-specific factors that vary significantly from place to place.
“In some municipalities, you may have a single list but a weaker campaign; in others, two lists and a strong campaign — and vice versa,” he adds. “What we saw in last year’s local elections is that, regardless of the model, support for the opposition is growing. And the growth is in the ways that are difficult to attribute to any single dominant factor, such as whether actors ran together or separately.”
The real value of these elections, he argues, lies elsewhere. “What can be learned are the messages that work, in door-to-door campaigning and online , as well as the full range of tactics the authorities may deploy and how to respond to them. That will be crucial for future national elections.” At the same time, another lesson appears clear. “It is important for opponents of the regime to appear as consolidated as possible and to avoid dispersing votes, which means the number of lists should be limited.” Whether that ultimately translates into a single list or several coordinated ones, however, remains an open question.
The European Stakes
These local elections also carry implications beyond Serbia’s borders and their timing is far from accidental. Coming just weeks before Hungary’s parliamentary elections, they offer a test of mobilization and control, particularly within a growing axis of political cooperation between Belgrade and Budapest. This relationship is well documented, often described as part of a broader “illiberal” alignment, has been built on shared political strategies and mutual support between Aleksandar Vučić and Viktor Orbán. Orbán is also heading into what may be the most competitive election of his rule, with polls suggesting his long-dominant Fidesz party could be trailing the opposition.
At the same time, Vučić has launched a renewed charm offensive toward Western audiences, particularly in German media projecting stability, reform, as well as a new approach to enlargement, together with his Albanian counterpart, Prime Minister Edi Rama. This dual strategy, tightening control domestically while trying to soften his image abroad, has long defined the regime’s approach. But this balancing act is becoming harder to sustain and, if these elections demonstrate anything, it is that formal procedures alone are no longer sufficient to guarantee democratic legitimacy.
For the European Union, and Germany in particular, the next parliamentary elections in Serbia will be a critical test that requires a shift in approach. For too long, engagement with Serbia has remained “business as usual” whereas the situation is anything but that. What is now needed is a move toward a strategy that places the integrity of elections, media and civic space at the center of engagement.
Germany and the EU should therefore make clear that electoral manipulation, and especially intimidation, coercion or violence, will come with a real and tangible costs to the regime.
This could include conditioning political engagement and financial support and, if necessary, introducing targeted measures against those responsible. These options must be clearly communicated in advance, not as abstract possibilities but as credible and imminent consequences based on the actions of the Serbian government. Development aid suspension and targeted measures are already being discussed in Brussels-based circles, and there are existing EU and bilateral frameworks to enforce them. The problem is not a lack of tools, but a lack of political will.
