Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has been going from village to village in recent weeks, attending tent circuses, promising roads, higher pensions and a better life. He pays special attention to eastern and southern Serbia. The students seem to trot behind him, and the opposition is almost non-existent
In an interview for the last issue of "Vremena" (issue 1858, dated August 13), political scientist Vujo Ilić says that it was not so much the regime that lost support as the students gathered the anti-regime front. So why such a tent campaign Vučić and why exactly in eastern and southern Serbia?
According to the latest population census, about 1,4 million people live in the region of southeastern Serbia. On the last one parliamentary elections, held in December 2023, slightly more than 790.000 people went to the polls there.
The list led by Aleksandar Vučić won 418.000 votes, while the opposition front "Serbia against violence" received 144.000 votes.
According to the last research organizations "Line", it is precisely in the region of southern and eastern Serbia that the "president" enjoys the greatest trust of the citizens - as many as 54 percent of voters trust him, so it seems that visiting places in this region is part of the government's strategy to strengthen support.
In addition, there is the slightest risk of some unwelcome welcome from a rebellious part of society, which would not be convenient for the message of the regime's television stations, whose cameras are closely following him - that the people have seen through the "blockades" and still worship Vučić.
In Svrljig, a place that has almost 1.300 pensioners more than workers, the future SNS candidate for prime minister and the current president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, said that he should have realized earlier that this small place in the Nišava district lacks small factories, especially for women.
It's no wonder that he addresses women, because research months ago show that it is women who trust him more than men.
According to the research that Dušan Lj. Milenković announced in July of this year that as many as 800.000 pensioners voted for Vučić. In light of that result, it is clear why the government lowered the prices of many medicines.
The president's most agile newsletter, Inform, reports that during his trip around Serbia, an elderly woman in tears thanked the president for the drastically lower price of the medicine that prevents bleeding in the brain.
On the other hand, the "Student in every village" campaign is much less intense than the one run by SNS. Study at UNIRSM have, judging by their posts on Instagram, organized stands in Brus, Kučevo, Raška, Ljubovia...
They still hold primacy in visibility on social networks, but there is definitely only one man present on television. Crta announced that Aleksandar Vučić spoke live on television 64 times in the 18 days of August, breaking his own record from March 2025, when he had 61 televised addresses - in the entire month.
Slobodan Cvejić, vice president of the party HEART, he said on August 19, in a guest appearance on Nova television, that the opposition parties do not have the political space in which they can compete with the regime, nor do they have the resources that SNS and SPS have.
Still, Goran Jesic, the president of the Citizens' Movement Solidarnost told "Danas" that the four parties that are part of the Platform for European Serbia, including SRCE and Freedom and Justice Party, present on the ground and that they are preparing extensively for the parliamentary elections, but that the election campaign itself will begin the moment the elections are announced.
However, will it then be too late for the opposition to win the votes of undecided voters, of whom according to the latest survey by Crta, there are 12,2 percent?
In the last parliamentary elections in 2023, Aleksandar Vučić won only 29.000 more votes in the Belgrade region than the "Serbia against violence" coalition.
This is also confirmed by Crta's research, which shows that 64 percent of voters in the Belgrade region do not trust Vučić, while that percentage rises to 72 percent in Vojvodina.
However, big cities are clearly not completely written off. Vučić claims, for the umpteenth time, that he will organize a rally in Novi Sad. This has not happened since the fall of the railway station canopy.
Sources: Weather, Today
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