Celebrations in Serbia after veteran ruler Vučić loses election to student-led protest movement

BREAKING: Serbia's veteran populist leader Aleksandar Vučić concedes his party has lost snap elections to a student-led protest movement, ending 12 years in power. Celebrations erupt in Belgrade and Novi Sad.

Twelve years of Aleksandar Vučić's rule, finished in one night.

Serbia's veteran leader conceded defeat in snap parliamentary elections to a student-led movement that didn't even exist two years ago. With 97 percent counted, the Student List took 52.6 percent of the vote. Vučić's Serbian Progressive Party managed 39.2. His own words, it is clear we have lost these elections. And look at the scenes in Belgrade and Novi Sad, dancing, fireworks, people crying in the street and chanting victory.

Remember where this started. A canopy collapsed at Novi Sad railway station and killed 16 people, and the anger over corruption never went away. Students turned that grief into a movement, then into a ballot, then into a majority.

Vučić wanted to come back as prime minister. Instead, a movement born from a railway station disaster just voted him out of power entirely.

This is Dave King, reporting for HIT.