Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Serb-majority entity, votes Sunday in a snap presidential election called after electoral authorities stripped separatist Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik of the presidency in August.

Dodik was removed after he was convicted for refusing to carry out decisions issued by Christian Schmidt, the international peace envoy who oversees implementation of the Dayton peace agreement that ended the 1992–95 Bosnian War.

The court also handed him a one-year prison sentence – which he avoided by posting bail – and banned him from participating in politics for six years. Bosnia’s top court upheld that ruling in early November.

In October, the National Assembly of Republika Srpska appointed Ana Trisic-Babic as an interim president until the Sunday election.

Here’s what we know about the vote, and why it matters.

When are the snap Republika Srpska elections taking place?

According to Bosnia’s Central Election Commission (CIK), voting will be open on Sunday, November 23, between 7am (06:00 GMT) and 7pm (18:00 GMT). More than 1.2 million people, spanning the three main ethnic groups – Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats – are eligible to vote. Turnout in previous presidential elections has typically ranged between 50 percent and 55 percent.

Although Trisic-Babic was appointed as an interim president, the law still requires new elections within 90 days of a president’s removal.

The winner of Sunday’s election will serve only the remainder of Dodik’s term, less than a year, until next October’s general elections.

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When will the results be announced?

Preliminary results are expected on election night, but the final official vote count by the Central Election Commission will be announced only after the body also validates all outcomes.

What is Republika Srpska?

Republika Srpska is one of two main political entities within Bosnia, along with the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina – each of which enjoys significant autonomy. The two share equal rights over a small, third self-governing administrative unit within the country, known as the Brcko District.

Republika Srpska was proclaimed by Bosnian Serb leaders in 1992 at the start of the 1992–95 war and was formally established as part of Bosnia’s post-war constitutional structure in 1995 under the Dayton peace agreement.

Republika Srpska covers about 49 percent of Bosnia’s territory, while the remaining 51 percent forms the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Republika Srpska has its own government, parliament, judiciary and police, but not its own army.

Today, it is overwhelmingly Serb-populated, with Serbs making up approximately 82 percent of its residents, alongside smaller Bosniak and Croat minorities, according to the latest census, which was held more than a decade ago in 2013.

Its demographics changed drastically during and after the war, and because of the ethnic cleansing of non-Serb communities. Before the conflict, Bosniaks and Croats made up about half of the population in the area that is now Republika Srpska; today, they account for less than 17 percent.

Its first president, Radovan Karadzic, has been sentenced to life in The Hague for the 1995 genocide against Bosniaks in Srebrenica, now a town inside Republika Srpska.

Why are the elections important?

The elections come at a highly sensitive time for Bosnia. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Republika Srpska has intensified its rhetoric to secede from Bosnia, with Dodik – a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin – increasingly calling for the entity to break away, potentially to join Serbia.

These elections will determine who replaces Dodik after his removal from office and his long dominance over Republika Srpska’s politics. The vote is also a test of how much influence he can still exert, despite being banned from political activity.

Who are the candidates?

There are six candidates on the ballot, four nominated by Republika Srpska’s political parties, and two running as independents.

The main contenders are Sinisa Karan of Dodik’s ruling Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), who is directly backed by Dodik, and Branko Blanusa of the opposition Serb Democratic Party (SDS).

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Karan is a longtime member of Dodik’s inner circle and a former Republika Srpska interior minister. He serves as minister for scientific and technological development and higher education in the current Republika Srpska government.

According to Radio Free Europe, he was part of a group ‘tasked’ to draft an SNSD plan for Republika Srpska to break away from Bosnia.

Analysts say Dodik sees Karan as an extension of his own power. Dodik has appeared prominently at Karan’s rallies.

Blanusa, the SDS candidate, is a member of the party’s Banja Luka City Committee and a professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the University of Banja Luka.

The SDS, now the main opposition party in Republika Srpska, was originally led by Karadzic. It is also a Serb nationalist party and has long competed with Dodik’s SNSD for the same electorate.

While it is critical of Dodik’s style of governance and allegations of corruption, it broadly shares similar positions on key political issues, including relations with the capital Sarajevo and scepticism towards the international overseer of the peace agreement.

The other party-backed candidates are Nikola Lazarevic of the Ecological Party of Republika Srpska and Dragan Dokanovic of the Alliance for New Politics (SNP).

Two independents, Igor Gasevic and Slavko Dragicevic, are also on the ballot but have remained almost entirely outside the public eye.

Who is Milorad Dodik?

Milorad Dodik, 66, is the former president of Republika Srpska.

Backed by Western governments in the late 1990s, he became the entity’s prime minister in 1998 and was seen as a promising alternative to the hardline nationalist leadership of genocide convict Karadzic and the then-ruling SDS, which dominated the post-war period. Then-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright described Dodik as “a breath of fresh air”, and both the United States and the United Kingdom placed their hopes in him as a more moderate future option.

He was among the first leaders in Republika Srpska to acknowledge the Srebrenica genocide. In a 2007 interview with a Bosnian television outlet, Dodik, the president of SNSD since its formation, said he knew “perfectly well what took place” and that “there was a genocide in Srebrenica”.

“That judgement was made by the court in The Hague, and that is an undeniable legal fact,” he said.

He has served three terms as president of Republika Srpska, holding two consecutive mandates from 2010 to 2018 and winning again in 2022. In 2018, he was elected as the Serb member of Bosnia’s three-member presidency.

During this period, however, Dodik adopted a far more nationalist stance, repeatedly calling for the entity’s secession, and denying the Srebrenica genocide – going back on his own earlier admissions.

In 2023, Dodik signed two controversial bills that, in essence, said that decisions of the Dayton Agreement peace envoy and rulings of Bosnia’s constitutional court would not apply to Republika Srpska. The peace envoy and the constitutional court blocked those bills.

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In March 2025, the constitutional court issued arrest warrants for Milorad Dodik and several of his allies on charges of undermining the constitutional order. But a month later, members of the Republika Srpska police blocked officers from the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) from entering the administrative centre of the Republika Srpska government to arrest Dodik, further intensifying tensions with Sarajevo.

In August, Bosnia’s electoral authorities stripped Dodik of the presidency and banned him from participating in politics. He, however, remains the president of the SNSD party and continues to be its most powerful figure.

Does the Republika Srpska political crisis affect Bosnia as a whole?

Yes. Bosnia as a country relies on a power-sharing system in which the two entities are closely linked. Republika Srpska’s challenge against state institutions and the rise of secessionist threats can affect the stability of the country on the national level.

The early election also strains Bosnia’s economy. The vote is funded from the state budget, rather than the entity’s own institutions, in a country with one of the smallest economies in Europe. Bosnia’s Central Election Commission has allocated more than six million Bosnian marks (close to $4m) for the elections.

Have any of the foreign countries commented on the elections?

The UK government, one of the guarantors of  the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, said at a United Nations Security Council meeting on Bosnia in October that holding presidential elections in the Republika Srpska would give “an opportunity for formation of their new government,” insisting that “the constitutional order and rule of law in Bosnia and Herzegovina must be upheld”.

“We encourage a focus on constructive and cooperative politics, including between Bosnia and Herzegovina’s two entities,” Jennifer MacNaughtan, the UK representative, said at the meeting.

In October, Russia, a strong ally of Republika Srpska, praised the transfer of power from Dodik to interim president Babic, but had also said that the Office of the High Representative peace envoy (OHR) should be “permanently closed”, echoing Dodik’s stance.

In conversation with the media, the spokesperson of Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, said the Russian Federation “wholeheartedly supports” the struggle of the leadership of Republika Srpska against “eroding fundamental principles” of the Dayton peace treaty.

The US has not officially commented on the elections, but the Department of the Treasury has recently lifted sanctions against Dodik, his family members and his allies, including the SNDS candidate Karan, for undermining the Dayton peace agreement. Bosnia’s Serb officials have suggested they were quietly seeking a more cooperative relationship with the US, while still preserving their friendly ties with Russia.

Republika Srpska’s strongest ally, Serbia, has taken a more cautious stance than usual. In an interview with the state-owned Radio Television of Serbia, Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic – who has faced antigovernment protests that have shaken the country for almost a year now – avoided commenting on the elections directly. He said he wished “all the best” to Republika Srpska and hoped everything would “pass peacefully”. He added that Serbia would always be there to help with “infrastructure”.

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What are the possible scenarios after the election?

If SNSD’s Karan wins, the entity would likely remain under Dodik’s influence. Speaking to Euronews Serbia, Karan said the vote had been “forced” onto Republika Srpska by the peace envoy Schmidt and that a vote for him is “a vote for President Dodik”.

The ruling SNSD also holds a strong majority in the National Assembly of Republika Srpska.

Blanusa, from the opposition SDS party, told local BN television that Republika Srpska, under the current leadership, has become “impoverished, displaced and isolated”, and has pledged to make tackling corruption in the entity his main goal.

Indeed, the entity faces deep economic challenges. According to the Database of Economic Indicators of Republika Srpska, total gross domestic product (GDP) for 2023 was about 16 billion Bosnian marks (about $9bn), half of the GDP of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina – and so, a third of the national economy.

The election verdict could also offer clues to political trends ahead of next year’s October elections, which could determine who rules the entity for another four years.