Electoral system in Serbia – basic information

The National Assembly has 250 members, elected for four years. All of them are elected in a single constituency - the whole of Serbia - from closed lists, which means that a voter chooses a list and not an individual candidate. Elections are called by the President of the Republic, 90 days before the Assembly's term expires, and no fewer than 45 and no more than 60 days may pass between the call and the day of voting. The Assembly can also be dissolved before its term ends, by the President on a reasoned proposal of the Government, in which case elections follow the same 45 to 60 day window. Parliamentary elections have been held in Serbia since 1990, and who has actually held power across those cycles shows more continuity than alternation

The right to vote and the right to stand for election are two separate rights, but the law attaches them to the same conditions: both belong to every adult citizen of Serbia over whom parental rights have not been extended and who has not been fully deprived of legal capacity. Both are exercised through the Unified Voter Register, kept by the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government: a citizen votes at the polling station to which their entry in the register is tied, and voters abroad vote at a diplomatic or consular mission only if they apply at least five days before the register is closed. Closing the register is not a single moment. The ministry closes it by decision fifteen days before election day and determines the total number of voters; from then until 72 hours before the vote changes are still made, but only by the ministry and only by decision, and those decisions reach the Republic Electoral Commission at least 48 hours before election day, in time to be entered in the extracts used at the polling stations. The voter register has never been audited.

A list reaches the ballot paper only if it is backed by at least 10,000 certified statements of voter support, or 5,000 for a list of a national minority. The Republic Electoral Commission checks the documentation while the Ministry compares the submitted voters against the register, and only signatures that pass both steps count. The amendments to the Law on parliamentary elections adopted in May 2026 removed the restriction under which a voter could support only one list, so the same voter may now sign for several. Every list must also meet the gender quota: at least 40 per cent of the candidates must be of the less represented gender, and within each block of five places on the list there must be three candidates of one gender and two of the other. Proclaimed candidate lists are published by the Commission as they are submitted.

The name a list carries is not the same thing as the first candidate on it, and it is not a candidate for prime minister either. The name of an electoral list may contain the name of one or more people - the list bearers - if they consent in writing, and the law states explicitly that a list bearer may, but need not, be a candidate for MP. The first candidate on the list is the person first in line for a seat, because seats are filled in the order of a closed list; the bearer is a name in the list’s title, and it may belong to someone who is not standing at all, or who holds another office entirely. Nor is a list bearer a Spitzenkandidat, the lead candidate who in some European systems stands as the contender to head the executive. Carrying the list confers no claim on forming a government: under the Constitution, the candidate for prime minister is proposed to the National Assembly by the President of the Republic, after hearing the opinion of the representatives of the elected lists, and the Assembly then votes on the government’s programme and on the election of the prime minister and the ministers at the same time. The ballot paper determines the composition of parliament, not who will lead the government.

Voting and counting are carried out by polling boards, not by a central authority. Polling stations are open from 07:00 to 20:00, and each is run by a board made up of members appointed in a permanent composition and members nominated by the list submitters. The board counts the ballots at the polling station itself as soon as voting closes and enters the result in a protocol, which is the basic document of the whole count. The obligation for board members to hold a certificate of completed training, introduced in 2026, applies only from January 2028. The Republic Electoral Commission establishes and publishes the overall report on the results within 96 hours of receiving all the aggregate reports.

Seats are then distributed among the lists that have won at least three per cent of the votes of the voters who voted. Lists of national minorities do not have to cross the threshold at all: their quotients are increased by 35 per cent when seats are allocated. The distribution itself is made by the d'Hondt method, or the system of the highest quotient - each list's vote total is divided in turn by one, two, three and so on, and the 250 highest quotients obtained become the 250 seats. This is why the value of a vote depends not only on how many votes a list wins but also on who else crosses the threshold, and why the gap between a list's share of the votes and its share of the seats comes mostly from the threshold rather than from the method itself. How votes become seats converts any result into seats.

Disputes over electoral rights are resolved in two steps, both of them short. An objection is lodged with the Republic Electoral Commission, and an appeal against its decision is decided by the Administrative Court; the deadlines are counted in hours and days rather than weeks, and they run from the publication of the decision being challenged. After the results become final, the first session of the new Assembly is convened no later than 30 days from the day the final results are proclaimed, and the term of an MP begins with the confirmation of the mandate at that session, not on election day.

The other elections do not all run on this model. The President of the Republic is elected under a two-round majority system, not a proportional one: the winner is the candidate who takes a majority of the votes of the voters who voted, and if no one does, a second round between the two leading candidates follows within 15 days. The presidential term is five years, a candidacy requires 10,000 signatures, and no one may be elected president more than twice. Provincial and local elections, by contrast, follow the parliamentary model. The Assembly of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina has 120 deputies elected for four years, entirely under a proportional system since the 2016 provincial elections, the mixed system in which half the deputies were elected in single-member districts having been abolished. Councillors in municipalities and cities are also elected for four years under a proportional system, with the same three per cent threshold and the same exemption for minority lists, while the number of signatures required for a list depends on the size of the local self-government unit. Mayors are not elected directly: the assembly elects the mayor from among the councillors, by secret ballot, by a majority of the total number of councillors.

These are the rules. Whether they are applied is a separate question, and it is the one CRTA's observation work has been addressed to for years - from the accuracy of the register and the conditions under which signatures are collected, to the composition of polling boards and the resolution of complaints. CRTA documents how each of these stages holds in practice, and publishes its findings in the reports of its election observation mission.