Is Vučić losing the trust of even his staunchest supporters?

The topic of Radio Free Europe's Most was whether Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić's ratings were falling. The interlocutors were Tamara Bajčić, executive director of Demostat, a research and publishing center from Belgrade, and Zoran Gavrilović, executive director of BIRODI, the Bureau for Social Research, also from Belgrade.

There was talk of whether the mass student protests, which have been going on for more than five months, have affected Vučić's ratings, whether the students have awakened the people in smaller towns and villages where, thanks to the information blockade, the Serbian Progressive Party was dominant, and whether Vučić's supporters, who had supported him so far primarily because he provided them with stability, have begun to lose trust in him because the country is in a deep crisis and he is unable to restore stability to them.

There was also discussion about how much Vučić's omnipresence on television, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other social networks in recent months and his appointment of a non-partisan figure and a respected scientist as the new government's prime minister-designate helps him maintain his ratings, given that citizens do not trust politicians because they believe they are susceptible to corruption.

Omer Karabeg: Have the mass student protests, which have been going on for more than five months, affected Aleksandar Vučić's rating?

Tamara Bajcic: Absolutely. Students are a very inconvenient political opponent for President Vučić because he cannot apply the propaganda and marketing model that he has been using to demonize and discredit his political opponents for thirteen years against them. Students have no leaders. They insist that they do not want leaders, they are not compromised and they have no money. Students are our children, our grandchildren - that is how public opinion perceives them. Therefore, any attempt to discredit and demonize students is doomed to failure and returns to the authorities like a boomerang.

Omer Karabeg: Do you have any information on whether Vučić's rating is falling?

Tamara Bajcic: We haven't done any field or telephone research since September last year, but we find this in our focus groups. The vast majority of his voters and supporters are those over 70. These are mostly pensioners and there are about a million of them. They are mostly from rural and suburban areas. He is also supported by about 500 public sector employees. This is the base of Vučić's support.

The students, however, managed to do something that no one from the opposition has managed to do so far, which is to penetrate Vučić's base, to enter among the supporters of the Serbian Progressive Party, and his electorate began to wax and wane. And not only that. They also managed to interest a portion of the abstainers, who, according to our research, number about 30 percent. That is the greatest reach of the student protests.

Zoran Gavrilović: One of the ways in which public opinion is controlled in our country is that only those agencies that are close to the government can conduct public opinion research. In fact, only they have the funds to conduct research. Independent agencies, civil society organizations, and even scientific institutes cannot do so.

Why am I saying this? Because public opinion polls serve to create a reality that does not exist, so you will hear that Aleksandar Vučić is supported by the majority, which is not true. He received 2.185.000 votes out of over six million voters in the elections, meaning he received a third. This is also indicated by the data that my colleague Đorđe Vukadinović from New Serbian Political Thought recently obtained.

When asked who they would vote for in the next elections, a third answered that they would vote for Vučić and the Serbian Progressive Party. These are mostly people over 60, with lower education, who get their information from Pink, Happy, Informer and Tanjug, or MTS channels, and primarily from RTS.

I don't think the student protests had any impact on Vučić's rating. Something else happened. People who had abstained since 2012, when the Serbian Progressive Party came to power, returned to politics. Vučić's propaganda aimed at two things - to demonize the opposition and any alternative to the government, and to provoke abstinence and apathy among as many voters as possible.

In such an environment, Aleksandar Vučić won the elections with 30 percent support because the turnout was low. The students turned the game around. Their struggle revitalized the alternative. Abstention is decreasing. This was seen on March 15th when a huge number of people took to the streets of Belgrade.

Children and grandchildren

Omer Karabeg: Have Serbian Progressive Party voters and Vučić's admirers started to lose trust in him? Political scientist Dejan Bursać thinks that this is very likely because Vučić has provided them with some kind of stability until now, and now the country is in a deep crisis that Vučić cannot solve and cannot restore stability to them. That is why they trust him less and less.

Tamara Bajcic: I agree with that. I would add something else. Although at first glance it does not seem that inflation is one of the key factors of these protests, it is certainly at their root. Because many citizens, and among them are certainly Vučić's fans, as you called them, feel insecurity and dissatisfaction. Pensioners especially feel this, not only because of the deep political and social crisis, but also because of the economic situation that makes everyday life difficult.

Of course, the student protest has both an indirect and direct impact on Vučić's supporters, because students are the children and grandchildren of Vučić's voters. Although these people are exposed to the influence of nationally broadcast media, led by RTS, they now, thanks to the students, have the opportunity to hear something that is not the demonization and discrediting of the government's political opponents. The students have begun to open their eyes.

Zoran Gavrilović: Authoritarian models of government are based on ensuring stability in both material and security terms. I think Aleksandar Vučić can no longer guarantee this to his voters. His electorate is the most dissatisfied part of society when it comes to their economic position. When you ask the question in polls - how satisfied are you with your economic position, you get the information that voters of the Serbian Progressive Party are the least satisfied, that those who abstain, even those who vote for the opposition, are more satisfied than them.

That's why I think Vučić has a problem with his electorate, which is moving towards abstention because they don't see that they can get what Vučić is promising them. I would like to point out something else. Based on the monitoring we conducted in the first two months of this year, Aleksandar Vučić spoke on national television for 143 hours. Of that, 91 hours were reruns and 52 hours were live. This was broadcast in the most watched timeslot from 18 to 20 p.m. At the same time, the content that Aleksandar Vučić posts on social networks is being taken over by national television. This is a serious abuse of the media.

Constitutional patriotism

Omer Karabeg: Mr. Gavrilović says that Vučić has been practically on the screen lately. He goes from one television station to another in the course of a day, and he is also very present on social networks. Does that help him maintain his ratings?

Tamara Bajcic: Vučić is absolutely omnipresent these days. It reminds me of his campaign when he jumped out of the fridge. Now we're just waiting for it to happen again. He's also very present among the younger generation - on Instagram and TikTok. The content differs depending on which group he's addressing - Generation Z, who are at the forefront of the protests, or the older population. On TikTok, he eats pomegranates and tries different types of Coca-Cola, while on Instagram and Facebook, where he addresses slightly older generations, he presents himself as a worker and a hustler who never stops working.

It seems to me, however, that this is not of much help to him, except that he is omnipresent. You know, the student rebellion in Serbia is a global phenomenon. It not only affects people in Serbia, but also in the region and the world. The student rebellion is a phenomenon of the Z generation that does not care what Vučić is doing. They are interested in constitutional patriotism, as we called it. They do not want any revolutions, they only demand respect for the constitution and the law. And that is why they keep repeating - why does Vučić keep answering to us when we do not address him, we address the institutions, and let the president do what he is constitutionally obliged to do.

Zoran Gavrilović: Every propaganda has its limits. The opposition's electorate is resistant to propaganda. Vučić's electorate is more authoritarian and susceptible to propaganda. According to our research, there are three indicators that determine people when they vote in elections. One is integrity, the second is expertise, and the third is power.

Students have integrity and expertise, which is why they have gained the support of citizens. Integrity is also important for Vučić's voters, especially the younger ones who have a university education. Vučić cannot sell his propaganda to them as easily as he can to less educated and older people.

Mandatory in Cacileland

Omer Karabeg: Can Vučić's latest move with the new government's designee boost his ratings? He is bringing a non-partisan figure and a respected scientist to the position of prime minister?

Tamara Bajcic: Vučić is bringing someone who is undoubtedly an expert in his field, which is endocrinology. He could help create a gathering of the greatest endocrinologists here, but he is a man who has absolutely no political experience. Is this Vučić's attempt to raise his rating?

I would rather say that this is his attempt to maintain what was beginning to take shape, to maintain the situation as it was before the fall of the Novi Sad canopy, because after that terrible and tragic event, things went downhill for Vučić. The students triggered an avalanche that contributed to the decline in Vučić's rating and support for the ruling system, and most importantly, contributed to the liberation from fear.

Zoran Gavrilović: Serbian Progressive Party voters prefer, above all, those who have power, and that is in fact Vučić, who presents himself as the savior of Serbia. The future prime minister is nowhere near that.

Omer Karabeg: Do you think he wasn't recognized in Vučić's base?

Zoran Gavrilović: Of course not, he is there for formal reasons. The seriousness of the future prime minister is best demonstrated by the fact that he went to what we call Ćacilenda. Someone who is a scientist of such rank cannot allow himself to go to something that is far from any academic integrity and which serves to make the university he comes from meaningless. This shows that he is very politically illiterate and that he accepted Vučić's offer probably for some personal reasons. I do not believe that he will have any influence.

What, in my opinion, did Vučić want with that move? I think he wanted to send a message to the university, and to his electorate, that he too has his own professor. He wanted to use him and his colleagues to try to break the blockades. Whatever the motive, it cannot help him save his own rating.

Patch method

Omer Karabeg: How do people react to that camp of "students who want to study" in Belgrade's Pionirski Park? Do his voters believe that these are real students protesting against the blockades of faculties because they cannot study, as the regime media claims? Can such moves contribute to Vučić's rating or harm him?

Tamara Bajcic: They can do him a lot of harm since it's a poorly staged play. Otherwise, everything the students do, Vučić does as if in a mirror. We at Demostata called it the Band-Aid method. Like in football when one player sticks to another like a Band-Aid. Vučić copies everything. The students had marches, and now we had a march of Vučić's supporters from Kosovo who came to a rally in Belgrade. If the students had a camp, Vučić has a camp - Ćaciland.

All of this is being broadcast on national television so that Vučić's supporters can think it's true. But the people watching it have students at home - children and grandchildren who are opening their eyes. The residents of Ćacilendo, who call themselves students 2.0, have their own pages on Instagram and TikTok where they share some footage of what they are doing, and they have actually usurped a public asset called Pioneer Park, which is under state protection. They have completely disfigured and destroyed it, and the question is how the park will be restored to its original state.

Omer Karabeg: You said that Vučić and his team are actually copying students, that they don't have their own ideas. Does this mean that Vučić no longer has foreign marketing advisors like he used to have?

Tamara Bajcic: He was not helped so much by foreign advisors as by the fact that until the fall of the canopy he had the support of both the West and Russia. This greatly increased his rating among his supporters, and in the eyes of the West he was a man who could deliver stability.

However, when you have a deep political and social crisis in Serbia, daily protests and hundreds of thousands of people on the streets, then even the West will wonder whether it is even capable of delivering stability and being a factor of stability. Of course, there is increasing doubt about that.

Zoran Gavrliovic: All of this is in the function of preserving his ratings. He can preserve his electorate, but his main problem is how to prevent the return to politics of that part of the population that until the student protests kept political abstinence. The students have awakened that part of Serbia and Vučić can no longer control it.

Abstention has been Aleksandar Vučić's main ally so far, so he won 100 percent of the power with some two million votes. He is now waiting to see if the student protests will fail. If they fail, it will be a victory for Vučić because part of the electorate, which reactivated and took to the streets, will return to abstention.

Phantom majority

Omer Karabeg: Can it be said that after 13 years in power, Vučić has finally bored the people?

Tamara Bajcic: He was annoying to students, citizens and everyone. However, the most important thing is how to continue, how to use and politically articulate the energy of the protests. Because political articulation is what the protests lack. Vučić's thirteen-year rule should be responded to with what we at Demostat called the imperative of parliamentary democracy - a united front of the opposition and students who took to the streets in huge numbers and called on the citizens. Such a performance in the elections would be the best response to Vučić's thirteen-year rule.

Even in elections like these - which are neither honest nor fair - such a front would have a good chance of winning because the student movement, by politicizing the citizenry, enabled the opposition to finally have inspectors at all polling stations. That was the weakest point of the opposition and that enabled the government's electoral manipulation. The crisis must be resolved through institutions - otherwise I fear there are serious chances of civil conflicts precisely because Vučić has bored everyone.

Zoran Gavrilović: I think Vučić has fed up with the majority of Serbia. People are showing this by taking to the streets. I would agree with my colleague Bajčić that dissatisfaction, if not institutionalized through elections that would bring about a democratic government, could result in violence on the streets. Although the media is portraying that Aleksandar Vučić has a majority, it is in fact a phantom majority.

I will repeat - he has 100 percent of power with a third of support. This imbalance must change. Institutions must be renewed. Serbia must become a society of democratic pluralism, not political, or party monism, as indicated by the founding of the Movement for the People and the State.