April 3 (SeeNews) - Serbia's prime minister Aleksandar Vucic, leader of the conservative Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), claimed victory in the first round of the country's presidential election on Sunday after preliminary official results and exit polls showed he won more than half of the votes.
Based on exit polls by pollster Ipsos, Vucic was backed by 2.035 million voters, or 55.2% of people who went to the polls, he said, as quoted in a statement by SNS late on Sunday.
"This is an important day as it showed the way Serbia wishes to go, it is important that the victory is crystal-clear as the gap is not small," Vucic said.
According to Ipsos exit polls data which Vucic quoted, Serbia's ombudsman Sasa Jankovic came second with 591,000 votes, or 16.2%, while Luka Maksimovic, a student in political sciences nominated by a group of citizens, was third with 9.4%.
Vuk Jeremic, who served as Serbia's foreign minister between 2007 and 2012, and the leader of nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) Vojislav Seselj won 5.7% and 4.5% of the votes, respectively, Vucic also said.
The new government will be formed in the coming two months, by the end of May, when the mandate of incumbent president Tomislav Nikolic expires, Vucic added.
Serbia is run by a coalition government of the SNS and the Socialist SPS party.
The Serbian central election commission said on Monday that, based on 56.56% of the ballots counted, Vucic won 57.03%, or 941,514 votes, followed by Jankovic with 14.87% and Maksimovic 9.04%.