Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 12/11/2024; Author: Nerma Šehović
Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential elections has, in some media reports, been attributed to Serbian voters.
On November 5, 2024, presidential elections were held in the United States, in which the candidate of the Republican Party and former U.S. president Donald Trump won.
The election race between Trump and his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris was followed worldwide, and the election results have been the subject of intense media coverage and numerous analyses. The day after the election, claims emerged in the public sphere in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region suggesting that the Serbian community in America played a key role in Donald Trump’s victory.
These claims or insinuations were made by the President of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, and the Speaker of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska, Nenad Stevandic.
On November 7, 2024, Srpski Telegraf published a claim on the front page of its print edition stating that “Serbs brought victory to Trump”. The same claims were published that day in an article on the web portal Republika, the online edition of this newspaper.
The article states the following:
SERBS BROUGHT TRUMP VICTORY
America and the world are beginning a new era because Serbian immigrants brought victory to Donald Trump in key states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. It is estimated that Trump will ultimately have at least 312 of the 538 electoral votes, with 45 from these three states giving him a majority.
Officially, 181,469 people identify as Serbs, but there are about a million Americans of Serbian descent, many of whom are active in the community and church. Businessman Ivan Trifunovic from Pennsylvania pointed out that the majority are located precisely in these three states where the election outcome was decided.
Similar claims circulated in the media in 2016 when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the presidential election (1, 2, 3).
What Are the Facts?
Our partner fact-checking web portal, Istinomjer, examined the claims of the decisive role of the American Serbian community in Donald Trump’s presidential victory in an analysis published on November 6, 2024.
As explained in the analysis, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau in 2023, there are slightly fewer than 200,000 people in the U.S. who identify as Serbian, with the largest number (22,625) residing in Illinois. This state has around 12.5 million residents, and in this election, Kamala Harris won Illinois, not Trump. In California, the second-largest state by Serbian-identifying residents (19,042), Harris also won.
So-called swing states are U.S. states where the outcome is traditionally uncertain and play a crucial role in deciding the election. Pennsylvania is one such state and ranks third in the number of Serbian-identifying residents (16,518). Donald Trump leads in this state by over 140,000 votes. Even if we assumed that all Serbs there were of voting age and all voted for Trump, 16,500 votes would not be decisive in a state with nearly 13 million residents.
Regarding Michigan and Wisconsin, which are also mentioned in the article, the number of people identifying as Serbs is also negligible relative to the total population. Michigan has 7,680 Serbian-identifying residents, and Wisconsin has 6,300 (link). Trump has a lead of over 78,000 votes in Michigan and 29,000 in Wisconsin, so it’s clear that these voters’ influence could not have been decisive or “brought” victory to Trump in these states.
According to Census Bureau estimates, in 2023, the U.S. had almost 335 million residents, meaning that those identifying as Serbs make up about 0.06% of the population. According to CNN, Trump received about 74.5 million votes, while Harris received 71 million. Again, even if all Serbian-identifying Americans voted for Trump, the 200,000 figure would be insignificant in the overall vote count.
Claims that there are a million people of Serbian descent in America cannot be verified, as such data does not exist. Even if there were a million people of Serbian descent in the U.S. and if all were eligible to vote and voted for Trump, the number would still be too small to make a significant difference in the results.
Based on the facts, we rate the claim that “Serbs brought Trump victory”, published by Srpski Telegraf, as fake news.
