Serbia's long-standing leader Aleksandar Vucic has admitted defeat to the student-led protest movement in snap parliamentary elections.

Axar.az reports, citing The Guardian, that Vucic pointed to preliminary results that suggested voters had overwhelmingly backed the students, potentially giving them a majority in the country’s 250-seat parliament.

“We still do not have final ⁠results,” Vucic told supporters at his party headquarters in Belgrade. “On the basis of a sample … it is clear ⁠that we have lost these ​elections, the Student ‌List has ‌won, they will have between 135 ‌and 140 seats and we will have 105.”

A representative sample by the ​CeSID-IPSPS pollsters suggested that the ​Student List’s candidate list will have ​138 deputies, while Vucic’s rightwing Serbian Progressive party (SNS) garnered 104 seats. The remaining seats ‌were likely to be shared ​between ethnic ​national minority parties, said the pollsters.

As news broke that Vucic’s 12 years in power had come to an end, celebrations erupted on the streets of Belgrade and other cities.