What message does Vučić’s first election ad send? Analysts: it aims to portray students as pro-NATO

The “Aleksandar Vučić – Ujedinjena Srbija” list, which holds number 1 on the ballot for the October 25 early parliamentary elections, has released the campaign’s first election ad, as Danas reports. In the ad, Aleksandar Vučić appears in the role of a waiter serving a family whose members, instead of food, “order” political promises.

The father “orders” highways, the grandfather asks that no sanctions be imposed on Russia and that Kosovo be preserved, the grandmother wants higher wages and pensions, while the mother asks for new maternity hospitals. Meanwhile, the two teenage children demand Vučić’s departure, as well as Serbia’s entry into the European Union and NATO. When the young people demand his departure, the father tells the waiter to give them “free education”; when they demand membership in the EU and NATO, the “waiter” Vučić replies: “There is no NATO, but there is peace and stability” — and the children answer back “it can be” (yes).

But can the president’s list really portray the students as pro-NATO? According to the analysts cited by Danas, hardly. Support for Serbia’s NATO membership has been “on the ground” in all polls for years — between 5 and 9 percent — and is low among young people too. The 2026 report of Krovna organizacija mladih Srbije (KOMS) shows that only 11 percent of young people support NATO membership (up from 9 percent a year earlier), while 47 percent oppose any form of cooperation with NATO. At the same time, young people’s support for joining the EU reached 53.1 percent — the highest level measured since 2017.

“Young people do not support NATO membership in a majority, and it is difficult to portray the Student List as pro-NATO,” Aleksandar Ivković from Savremena politika tells Danas. Tamara Bajčić from Demostat assesses that one of the ad’s main messages is that “those who want Vučić’s departure are for NATO and the EU”, but stresses that the president’s target group is not educated urban young people, but poor rural pensioners and public-sector employees.

Đorđe Vukadinović from Nova srpska politička misao calls the ad yet another piece of regime propaganda spin, with which, as Danas reports, the aim is to present the young people and the voters of “Studentska lista – Studenti pobeđuju” as unpatriotic or “traitors”, in order to mobilize the government’s own base ahead of the October 25 elections.