Global Information2004 Serbian local elections information
Local elections were held in Serbia (excluding Kosovo) on 19 September and 3 October 2004, concurrently with the 2004 Vojvodina provincial election. This was the only local election cycle held while Serbia was a member of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro.
The 2004 local elections were the first regular local elections held in Serbia after the fall of Slobodan Milošević in October 2000, and the voting procedure was significantly different from that used in the previous cycle. Under the prior system, local assembly members were elected by first-past-the-post balloting in single-member constituencies. The 2004 elections were held under a system of proportional representation with a three per cent electoral threshold. Successful lists were required to receive three per cent of all votes, not only of valid votes.
This cycle also saw the introduction of direct election for the mayors in most of Serbia's cities and municipalities (although not in the constituent municipalities of the City of Belgrade, which were exempted). Mayors were elected over two rounds, with the second round of voting taking place on 3 October 2004. The direct election of mayors was subsequently abandoned, and in future election cycles mayors were chosen by the elected members of the local assemblies.
One-third of assembly mandates were assigned to candidates from successful electoral lists in numerical order. The other two-thirds were assigned to other candidates on the same lists at the discretion of the sponsoring parties or coalitions; at least one quarter of the latter mandates were to be assigned to "members of the less represented sex on the list" (which, in practical terms, usually meant that these mandates were reserved for female candidates).[1]
For the newly restructured constituent municipalities of Niš, elections were held for mayors and for members of nine-person municipal councils (rather than municipal assemblies).
The campaign saw growth in support for both the centre-left Democratic Party and the far-right Serbian Radical Party,[2] both of which were at the time in opposition in the republican parliament.
The most closely watched election was that for mayor of Belgrade. In the second round of voting, Democratic Party candidate Nenad Bogdanović narrowly defeated Aleksandar Vučić, who was at the time a member of the Radical Party.
- ^ ZAKON O LOKALNIM IZBORIMA, Lokalni Izbori 2004, B92, accessed 29 May 2021.
- ^ "SRS i DS vode u Srbiji i u Beogradu", B92, 16 September 2004, accessed 19 May 2021.