Its president, Vojislav Seselj, is presently being tried for war crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague.

The elections have been marked by an unusually high turnout and polarisation of the vote. Nikolic won 40 percent to beat current pro-Western president Boris Tadic, who heads the Democratic Party (DS) and received 35 percent. Because no candidate won more than 50 percent, a second round between Nikolic and Tadic will take place on February 3.

The result overturned opinion polls that predicted 21 percent for Nikolic (and 19 percent for Tadic) and smashed the conception held by many political analysts that there was a “glass ceiling” to Nikolic’s support that would prevent him ever getting more than 30 percent.

The votes for the top two candidates came at the expense of the seven other candidates who stood. It was a particularly disastrous result for Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and his Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), which backed Infrastructure Minister Velimir Ilic as candidate for the DSS-led Popular Coalition. He came a distant third with just 8 percent of the votes. Just one year ago, the DSS won 17 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections, leading to its participation in a coalition government with the DS.

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