Half-Million Voter Records Lack Street Details Before Serbia's Ballot

The political future of Serbia hangs in the balance this weekend.

Voters go to the polls on October 25 to determine whether Aleksandar Vucic will return to the top executive role after a decade as president. Vucic, who led the country as head of state for fourteen years, stepped down in late September to run for prime minister. That is the office he held from 2014 to 2017. The race pits his Progressive Party coalition against a student-led opposition movement that gained momentum through street protests.

Scrutiny of the voting process has intensified due to data errors found in the official register. An investigation by RFE/RL's Balkan Service identified roughly 500,000 people listed without complete address information. Many of these records are missing specific street names or house numbers. The researchers also found hundreds of names attached to public buildings, such as social welfare centers, or to single residential addresses where the physical space could not logically hold so many residents. These flaws mirror complaints from the 2023 election, when international observers documented irregularities including the transport of voters from Bosnia-Hercegovina and reports of intimidation.

The timing of the vote amplifies the tension. It falls just days before the second anniversary of the Novi Sad railway station collapse. On November 1, 2024, a renovated canopy fell, killing sixteen people. The disaster, linked to a Chinese-led construction project, sparked nationwide anger over corruption. Protests followed, marked by police force and arrests. In one notable incident on March 15, 2025, authorities used a sonic weapon against demonstrators, an action later deemed unlawful. Vucic called for early elections after another wave of student protests in June.

Polling data indicates the electorate is split evenly between the ruling bloc and the opposition. Vladimir Bilcik, a former European Parliament rapporteur for Serbia, called this the first election in over a decade with a genuinely uncertain result. The opposition list is headed by cardiologist Ilija Srdanovic. The group consists mostly of nonpartisan figures, including university professors, and has stated that winning the list does not automatically place its leader in the prime minister's chair.

Government officials claim they fixed the issues cited in the 2023 OSCE report. However, an interim report from the current observation mission, which includes 300 deployed monitors, disputes that assessment. RFE/RL found that the number of eligible voters in Bosnia and Kosovo rose before the vote. These areas are traditional strongholds for ethnic Serb support of the ruling party. Four employees of Serbia-funded institutions in Kosovo said they faced pressure to vote for the government side. Similar pressure was documented in several municipalities within Serbia.

Allegations of illegal surveillance have further complicated the campaign. A statement from the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee on October 21 cited reports of monitoring against opposition members. Research by the nonprofit SHARE and Toronto University scholars alleged that the Pegasus spyware was used in at least sixteen cases in 2026. The software is illegal in Serbia. While the opposition blames the state for the spying, government officials have denied targeting political rivals.

International actors are watching closely. The Freedom House report noted a decline in freedoms in Serbia over the last ten years. The European Parliament has raised concerns about Russian influence. US Republican Congressman Joe Wilson said Russia is deploying resources to monitor citizens and disrupt the student movement. Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly backed Vucic. In response, Vucic pledged to keep Serbia's foreign policy course steady, including its refusal to join EU sanctions on Russia over Ukraine. The student movement has focused on corruption but also supports the current stance on Kosovo and sanctions. Serbia's EU integration has stalled, with no new accession chapter opened since late 2021.