When Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić shared a quick lunch of traditional burek pastries at a local bakery in Subotica last November, they could hardly have guessed they would both be out of power within a year. According to BBC News, both leaders were ultimately ousted by popular movements, with Orbán falling first in April after being defeated by Péter Magyar's Tisza party, followed by a landslide victory by a student movement in Serbia's parliamentary elections.

BBC News reported that the Tisza party in Hungary and the Student List in Serbia looked very different in structure—with Tisza centred around the personality and energy of its leader, while the students in Serbia insisted they had no leadership. Despite these structural differences, huge voter turnouts of 79% in Hungary and 69% in Serbia were driven by tech-savvy young people in both countries, who used artificial intelligence tools to crunch numbers, identify threats to the vote, and mobilise tens of thousands of election monitors.

Cross-border cooperation played a significant role in the outcomes, as BBC News detailed. The DE civic action group in Hungary sent 70 election monitors to Serbia during the elections to work with student movement representatives in the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina. Over the summer, these groups held workshops to share their experiences and methods. A key technique involved identifying "infected" polling districts in advance—areas where surprisingly high numbers of votes for the governing party in past elections suggested voter intimidation or "chain voting" techniques.

Student activist Péter Klemm described to BBC News seeing groups of masked hooligans and supporters gathering near voting stations on election day afternoon, prompting volunteers to send mobile teams and film the proceedings. He believes that having 20 to 30 stationary and mobile volunteers acting as a deterrent at each threatened polling station helped prevent intimidation and electoral fraud.

Background

According to BBC News, both Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Aleksandar Vučić in Serbia had long looked invincible, having been in power for 16 and 14 years respectively. Both leaders had taken over state institutions and established business empires that overlapped between the two countries. Prior to their ouster, their cooperation included discussions on oil and other business deals, such as a planned Hungarian purchase of Serbia's Nis oil.

Why it matters

For ordinary readers, the events in Hungary and Serbia illustrate how grassroots mobilization, youth-led civic participation, and cross-border sharing of electoral monitoring techniques can alter the political landscape even against long-entrenched leadership. The reports highlight the growing role of technology, data analysis, and coordinated civilian oversight in safeguarding electoral processes.