Tomislav Nikolic of the strongest opposition Serbian Progressive Party is two per cent ahead of Boris Tadic of the ruling coalition's Democratic Party in the Serbian presidential runoff, according to the first preliminary results of the Centre for Free Elections and Democracy (CeSID).
According to CeSID's results at 9 pm on Sunday, Nikolic won 49.2 per cent of the vote and Tadic 47.5 per cent.
CeSID programme manager Marko Blagojevic told reporters that based on the results of 70 per cent of polling stations from a sample, Nikolic was two per cent ahead of Tadic. He said CeSID would process all polling stations from the sample by 10 pm and that if Nikolic's advantage remained the same, he would likely be Serbia's new president.
Blagojevic said the chances were slim of a turnabout of the current trend with Nikolic in the lead.
Tadic and Nikolic won the most votes among 12 candidates in the first round of the presidential election on May 6. According to the State Election Commission, Tadic then won 25.31 and Nikolic 25.05 per cent of the vote.
Under the Serbian Constitution, the president can be elected to two consecutive five-year terms. This was the third time that Tadic and Nikolic went head to head in a run-off for Serbian president.
In the first round of the previous presidential election in early 2008, Nikolic, then a candidate of the Serbian Radical Party, won nearly 40 per cent of the vote, while Tadic won a little over 35 per cent. But in the runoff, Tadic won 50.5 and Nikolic 47.9 per cent of the vote.
If Tadic wins today's runoff, he would practically get a third consecutive presidential term and formally his second, while this would be Nikolic's first term as president.
