The repeat vote moved one seat: Usame Zukorlić's list enters parliament

The Republic Electoral Commission (RIK) has published results from all 8,392 polling stations. With that, the repeat vote at 53 stations on 1 November closed the count of the 25 October election. There is one change: a seat moves from the Student List to Usame Zukorlić's list (SPP). The Student List still has an absolute majority.

The seat distribution in this article is our own calculation using the formula in the law, on figures from the RIK website on the morning of 2 November. CRTA announced the same change. RIK gives the official number of seats in its overall report on the election results, which has not been published yet.

The new parliament

• Student List – Students Win: 140 seats, 141 before the repeat vote (2,354,417 votes, 53.01%)
• Aleksandar Vučić – United Serbia: 103, unchanged (1,731,323 votes, 38.98%)
• Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians – Dr Bálint Pásztor: 2 (35,461 votes)
• Albanian Coalition: 2 (27,683 votes)
• Rasim Ljajić – Ljudski (SDP – CDP): 1 (20,638 votes)
• SDA of Sandžak – Guardians of Sandžak: 1 (12,596 votes)
• Usame Zukorlić (SPP) – Movement for Unification: 1, none before the repeat vote (12,440 votes)

A majority is 126 seats. Only the two largest lists passed the threshold of 3% of voters who voted, a little over 133,000 votes. The Ivica Dačić – Factor of Stability list stayed below it, with 94,766 votes (2.13%). National minority lists take part in the distribution without the threshold.

Some media reported that the lists of Rasim Ljajić and SDA of Sandžak have two seats each. That would add up to 252, not 250: on RIK's figures each has one.

4,444,310 voters cast a ballot, 68.89% of the 6,451,292 registered. RIK calculates percentages on all ballots in the box, while our Results page uses valid ballots, so there the Student List has 53.7% and Vučić's list 39.5%.

What happened at the 53 stations

Of 24,438 registered voters, 10,978 turned out for the repeat vote, 44.9%. The Aleksandar Vučić – United Serbia list came first with 4,769 votes (43.4%) and the Student List second with 4,640 (42.3%). Then came the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians with 457, Usame Zukorlić's list with 308, Rasim Ljajić's list with 223, SDA of Sandžak with 215 and Factor of Stability with 195 votes. Vučić's list came first at 36 stations, the Student List at 14, the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians at two in Bačka Topola, and Ljajić's list at station 81 in Novi Pazar.

These 53 stations are not a sample of Serbia. They were up for a repeat vote because on 25 October their results could not be determined or the vote was annulled, so this split says nothing about how the whole country would vote.

Why exactly one seat moved

The votes of every list taking part in the distribution are divided by 1, 2, 3… up to 250, and the 250 largest quotients each win a seat (Article 129 of the Law on the Election of Members of Parliament). The quotients of national minority lists below the threshold are increased by 35% (Article 140).

Before the repeat vote, at 8,339 stations, Usame Zukorlić's list had 12,132 votes. Increased by 35%, that is 16,378, while the last, 250th seat went to the Student List with a quotient of 16,665 (its 2,349,777 votes divided by 141). The list was 213 votes short.

The repeat vote also raised that bar: the Student List won 4,640 votes, so its 141st quotient rose to 16,698. Usame Zukorlić's list therefore needed at least 12,369 votes, 237 more than before. It won 308 and now has 12,440, a quotient of 16,794. That is 71 votes more than it needed: with 72 fewer votes, the seat would have stayed with the Student List.

Where the 308 votes came from:

• Novi Pazar, station 81: 176. It is the largest station where the vote was repeated (1,838 voters), and without its votes the list would not have won the seat.
• Aleksinac, 8 stations: 67, of which 53 at station 74 in Glogovica
• Loznica, station 32 in Lešnica: 26
• Pirot, station 33: 17
• Babušnica, station 36 in Radoševac: 10
• ten other stations: 12 in total

At station 81 in Novi Pazar the vote was annulled because the control sheet went missing. According to the figures RIK published for that station and then withdrew, 1,035 voters cast a ballot on 25 October: Student List 448, Ljajić's list 265, Vučić's list 157, SDA of Sandžak 60 and Usame Zukorlić's list 29. On 1 November 766 voted: Ljajić's list 214, SDA of Sandžak 210, Usame Zukorlić's list 176, Student List 108 and Vučić's list 48.

The allegations from Aleksinac

CRTA, which observed all 53 stations, said during the vote that its observers in Aleksinac had recorded allegations of vote buying in favour of Usame Zukorlić's list, and that in Novi Pazar and Majdanpek the UV lamp had not been used properly (A1). These are observers' allegations, not established wrongdoing. In the evening CRTA said that "only 12 votes decided" that the list would win a seat (N1).

What RIK's figures say about it:

• At station 74 in Glogovica, Usame Zukorlić's list had no votes on 25 October. According to the scanned record, 343 voters turned out then and the box held 344 ballots. On 1 November, out of 226 voters, it won 53 votes.
• At the other 80 stations in Aleksinac, where there was no repeat vote, the list has four votes in total.
• Even without all 67 votes from Aleksinac, the list would have 12,373 votes, four more than it needed, and would keep the seat. Sandžak Danas published the same calculation (Sandžak Danas).

In the CRTA statements we found there is no calculation showing how it arrived at 12, and we do not get that number from RIK's final figures. By the time of publication we had found neither a decision by the competent authorities on the allegations nor a response to them from the SPP.

After the vote Usame Zukorlić said: "The Movement for Unification is entering the National Assembly of Serbia, and Sandžak will have a stronger voice in parliament" (N1).

Epilogue

Before the vote we wrote that the order of the lists and the threshold outcome could not change, but a single seat could. That is what happened: the Student List has an absolute majority, Vučić's list the same number of seats, and the 53 stations decided only who gets the 250th seat.

The next steps, if no one files an objection:

• Summary reports: local electoral commissions have 96 hours from the close of the repeat-vote stations, which means until Thursday 5 November at 20:00 (Article 119).
• RIK's overall report: within 96 hours of receiving all summary reports, so by about 9 November at the latest, with the number of seats for each list. A list's submitter and any voter can object to it within 72 hours (Article 121).
• Assigning seats: within ten days of the overall report, RIK assigns the seats to candidates in their order on the list and issues certificates of election (Article 130).
• First session: no later than 30 days after the final results are announced, convened by the outgoing Speaker. The 90-day deadline to elect a government runs from the constitution of parliament (Vreme).
• Presidential election: the outgoing Speaker Ana Brnabić, acting President since Aleksandar Vučić resigned on 27 September, has to call it so that it is held by the end of December (RFE/RL, BBC Serbian).

The Results page now has all 8,392 stations, including new figures for the three stations RIK withdrew because of the repeat vote (Šid 35, Bačka Topola 34 and Novi Pazar 81), and the parliament chart.

Note: Stranka pravde i pomirenja (SPP), which submitted Usame Zukorlić's list, followed polling station records through Bela golubica in the election on 25 October (we wrote about it). All figures in this article are from the RIK website, and anyone can repeat the seat calculation using Articles 129 and 140 of the law.