“The President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, loves reading polls, but he is not in this line of work. Besides, let’s look at it this way: if our data were incorrect and things were actually the other way around, we would have had snap parliamentary elections a long time ago, as we know that the practice over the last ten years has been to have elections every year or two,” says Vojislav Mihailović, a political scientist and director of public opinion research at the CRTA organisation, responding to Vučić’s claims about CRTA’s poll.
According to the poll, among decided voters at this moment, 44.9 per cent of citizens would vote for the student list, while 35.7 per cent would vote for the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), and 3.8 per cent for the SPS (Socialist Party of Serbia), according to public opinion research conducted in June 2026 by CRTA and Stanford University’s Democracy Action Lab.
“This is not the first time we have published a poll and it wasn’t immediately met with a reaction, whether from the media or the President himself. What we can say is that the research was conducted according to the highest global standards, that the sample size is double that of the average poll we usually see in Serbia, and that sample quality control was of a high standard. We are very confident in our data, and as to whether we will react to certain comments from non-experts and unauthorised individuals, there is simply no point in commenting further,” Mihailović stated, as reported by N1.
Responding to Vučić’s statement that CRTA had previously claimed students had 70 per cent support and that the organisation was “trying to convince people to vote for the students”, Mihailović stated that such data does not exist and that it was a malicious comment designed to make it look as though support is falling.
“If it was a comparison with the figures of support for the protests last year, those are two completely incomparable things. We ourselves have previously explained that you simply cannot translate support for protests into votes – that is something that cannot be done, so this massive drop he (Vučić) is talking about doesn’t exist,” Mihailović explained.
He added that he found it “ironic” to listen to any government representative talking about propaganda or electoral manipulation and fraud.
What else did Vučić say?
Yesterday, the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, disputed the results of the poll conducted by the non-governmental organisation Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA), claiming that it was propaganda.
“This is their last chance to try and get something through deception. They are trying to boost optimism among those who want to overthrow the government on the streets,” the Serbian President said, among other things.
According to him, CRTA acted unprofessionally, carelessly, and in a propagandistic manner.
“They (CRTA representatives) are not objective observers; instead, they promote violence and bad values,” Vučić concluded.
For the record, the research by CRTA and Stanford University’s Democracy Action Lab (DAL) was conducted from 10 to 24 June using face-to-face interviews with a representative sample of 2,324 adult citizens of Serbia, and the full study is available on the crta.rs website.
(Danas, 17.07.2026)
https://www.danas.rs/vesti/politika/crta-vucic-istrazivanja/