Aleksandar Vučić

Aleksandar Vučić is the incumbent Prime Minister and leader of Serbia's strongest political party, Srpska napredna stranka (Serbian Progressive Party). Aside from his own party, Vučić’s candidacy is supported by various parties that form the current Government of Serbia, with Ivica Dačić, leader of the Socijalistička partija Srbije (Socialist Party of Serbia) and former prime minister speaking at all of his rallies.

A former right-wing nationalist and former Minister for Information in the government led by Slobodan Milošević in 1999 – during the NATO strikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – he turned his back on Vojislav Šešelj, leader of the far-right Srpska radikalna stranka (Serbian Radical Party) and formed Srpska napredna stranka with Tomislav Nikolić. During the campaign for parliamentary elections in 2012, he was anti-European, but after the elections became a vocal supporter of Serbia's accession to the European Union.

He says that Serbia should remain neutral, but that it needs NATO as an ally, most of all to protect the Serbian people and the Serbian enclaves in Kosovo.

Enthusiastic about the European Union, he remains a close ally of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whom he visited during this campaign. But he also maintains close contacts with Russian president Vladimir Putin, and spent the last weekend of his campaign in Moscow. He also welcomes Arab and Chinese investors. He is seeking reconciliation with Bosnian and Albanian politicians, but occasionally indulges in sabre-rattling towards Serbia’s neighbours, especially Croatia. The feud with Croatian ex-PM Zoran Milanović is now a thing of the past, and Vučić has indicated that he would try and have a better relationship with current Croatian PM Andrej Plenković.

According to opinion polls, Vučić has the support of the elderly and less educated voters. He is particularly strong in the poorer regions of Serbia. His critics claim that he has too much influence over the media and that most of the television channels and most popular daily newspapers work for him.

He claims that the opposition candidates are trying to set back Serbia's progress, and that some of them are financed by George Soros.