Preliminary vote tallies in Serbia show the coalition of pro-European Union parties led by Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic sweeping to a landslide win in Sunday's general elections.
Monitors report Vucic's Progressive Party with nearly 53 percent of the vote and the allied Socialists who have been ruling in a coalition for the past four years with an additional 13 percent.
The ultra-nationalist pro-Russian Radical Party of Vojislav Seslj, who was recently acquitted of war crimes charges in The Hague, was running a distant third with 7 percent. Voter turnout was set at 53 percent.
Vucic called the elections two years early, seeking a new mandate to enact tough economic and political reforms demanded by EU gatekeepers in exchange for moving forward with the EU membership process.
His critics accused him of calling the vote now to avoid public discontent that many predict will occur when those reforms fully impact daily life in the Balkan country of 7.1 million residents.
In recent weeks, the anti-EU Seslj, freed by a United Nations tribunal last month, described Sunday's vote as an informal referendum on whether Serbia joins the "enemy."
