6th October, Latvian elections

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Happening this Saturday. Big question will be the one that we always ask around Latvian elections: will Russia-aligned Harmony be allowed into government? (The answer is no) Here's a party rundown:


New Unity

Centre-right party of former PM Laimdota Straujuma, who lasted one year in the job before resigning due to various screw ups and clashes with the controversial party head, and her party - formerly the dominant member of the governing coalition - has collapsed along with her; it may not reach the threshold thus time around. The purpose of Unity - indicated by its name - was to present a unified liberal-conservative front against Harmon led by popular leader Valdis Dombrovskis. Now he is gone, it has completely devolved into factional bickering between the liberals and the conservatives.

The Union of Greens and Farmers


Party of incumbent Prime Minister Māris Kučinskis (technically, he belongs to a small associated regional party), as well as President Raimonds Vejonis, the ZZS were formed in 2002 and have pretty much never left the government since. They are technically an alliance between the Green Party and the Farmer's Union, an alliance stemming from the post-Soviet break-up of the industrial, collectivized farms to homesteads owned by their original families. This has led to a loyal rural electorate, especially in Western Latvia. Formerly controlled and funded by olicharch Aivars Lembergs, he may have lost his grip. Like Unity, they are anti-Moscow and Atlanticist, promising never to ally with Harmony, as well as to tackle money laundering (see this politico article on divisive Finance Minister Dana Reizniece-Ozola.

National Alliance


Final member of the outgoing government, NA is a right-wing nationalist party (can fairly be labeled as far-right; one of its two constituent parties has its origins in a nasty gang of NAzi apologists) that uses its presence in government to ensure that no concession can be made on the Russophone issue. Standard far right lines on things like refugees, LGBT etc. Polling at high single digits; they got 17% last time - they have been undermined by the more, um, normal populist right wing party, the New Conservatives.

[/url]Harmony

Harmony is a self-defined Social Democratic party that since its inception has won a plurality of votes and seats off a loyal base, including most of Latvia's Russophones. Led by the Mayor of Riga, Nils Usakovs (who is not the Prime Ministerial candidate), Harmony is treated with deep suspicion by many ethnic Latvians, who worry that their small country is infiltrated with Kremlin proxies. Indeed of the major parties, it is the most dovish on Russia: it is against economic sanctions and did not condemn the invasion of Crimea; however it cut off its "agreements" with the United Russia Party. Harmony wants to increase spending on education and healthcare and to defend the rights of Russophones. It is expected to get around 20-25% of the vote; they got 23% of the vote last time around.

"who does the country belong to?"

In 2014 a populist group called the Alliance of Regions was elected, an association of random regional parties. One MP, former actor Arturss Kaimiņs, left within the year, irritated at the leaders working with Unity; forming his own anti-elite party, the KPV. He is your standard vaguely crazy right-wing anti-establishment guy, known for carrying a camera with him at all times so he can constantly stream his activities on YouTube. This includes a video of him having an argument with a flight crew because there were no in-flight announcements in Latvian; which caused him to be arrested. His policies are boilerplate stuff: more support to SME's, reduce bureaucracy to help orphans etc. Rapidly increased in popularilty after he was arrested for possible graft, but has fallen a bit to earth since then. Wants to be Donald Trump, to the extent he did a "notice me senpai" to POTUS:


New Conservative Party

New right-wing party led by a former Minister of Justice that promises to defend Latvian traditions, received a big boost in popularity when they got two former employees from the anti-corruption bureau that were believed to be fired for getting too close to the big guys. Have carved a useful niche as the nice version of NA; they became the joint largest right-wing party in Riga's council last election alongside another newcomer. To a certain extent you could see them as one of the successors to Unity's Right wing.

Development/For!

And you could see this coalition, PAR, as an inheritor of Unity's liberal factions.. The two constituent parties want to "breach the gap" between the Russophones and the Latvian-speakers, proclaiming that they appreciate the "individual freedom and equal treatment before the law regardless of nationality, race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, or physical and mental abilities". Is all over the place in polling at the moment.

Nobody else will get in.

[DavidB.]

Not sure, but to me, the New Conservatives seem to be more of a competitor to (New) Unity than to the National Alliance. I suspect the National Alliance are losing votes to Who Owns The State: protest voters may go there, "true believers" stay with the NA.

Poll of polls, September 30 (compared to GE2014):

Harmony 21% (-2%)
New Conservatives 14% (new)
Greens and Farmers 13% (-7%)
Who Owns The State 12% (new)
National Alliance 11% (-6%)
New Unity 9% (-13%)
Development/Movement For! 8% (new)

[Diouf]

LTV exit poll

Harmony: 19.4%
Movement For!: 13.4%
National Alliance 12.6%
New Conservative Party: 12.4%
Who owns the state?: 11.5%
Union of Greens and Farmers:9.7%
Unity: 6.9%
Latvian Association of Regions 3.5%

Threshold is 5%

[IceAgeComing]

That Greens number basically forces a change in PM you'd think - they probably could have gotten away with being the second biggest party and leading it but not like that.  Other than that its broadly in line with the exit polls: a million parties all at around the same number.

The Progressives, who are probably the closest thing to a mainstream centre-left party, got just less than 3%.

[Diouf]

The two parties who have held the PM position during the term, Unity and Unions of Greens and Farmers both drop significantly, and will likely be the two smallest parties in parliament. Three new parties enter parliament. Harmony remains the biggest party, but will somebody work with them now?

[DavidB.]

Very strong result for Movement For, even weaker than expected for Unity and quite bad for Greens and Farmers. Perhaps a somewhat underwhelming figure for the New Conservatives too.

A coalition excluding both Harmony and Movement For will probably require all "non-left" parties (and NA would be the biggest...), so perhaps they will end up having to form a coalition with Harmony anyway. But the question is who would do it. NA and Who Owns The State won't, so it would depend on the New Conservatives, Greens and Farmers, or Unity, and they would perhaps have to cooperate with Movement For too, which would be quite difficult in and of itself for the socially conservative parties too.

[IceAgeComing]

I'd think that PAR is clearly the much more likely coalition partner than Harmony - and we have had liberals in coalitions with... groups like whatever the NA is in coalition before to keep them out.  Probably one of the few places where you get liberals working with people who seem to have an unnatural liking of the SS...

[Diouf]

LTV coverage here: https://ltv.lsm.lv/lv/tieshraide/velesanu-nakts.-saeimas-velesanas-2018/live.360/

[DavidB.]

PAR seem to be a special kind of liberal though, I'm quite astounded by their performance if the exit polls are correct. Who votes for them, apart from highly educated liberals (with or without latte) in Riga (and how many of them are there really)? I had the impression that they were basically similar to Bulgaria Yes, especially with their focus on LGBT rights and all that. But you are the expert on the Baltics and you may be right: they might actually be coalitionable, but they would have to swallow a lot of their socially liberal demands.

For a somewhat stable government it would probably be best if the New Conservatives came second...

[Diouf]

Results should come here: https://www.lsm.lv/velesanu-rezultati-2018/

[DavidB.]

The map should be interesting.

[Diouf]

This page suggests that Union of Greens and Farmers could join Harmony.

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https://en.rebaltica.lv/2018/08/who-is-who-in-upcoming-latvian-parliamentary-elections/

[Diouf]

First real results are starting to come in.

https://sv2018.cvk.lv/pub/ElectionResults

3.02% counted

[Diouf]

10.5% counted. PAR will probably increase once more of the Riga vote starts coming in. Who owns the state? and ZZS are higher than in the exit poll so far, but some of that could be do to overrepresentation in the (rural?) areas counted first?

[Diouf]

10.5% counted. PAR will probably increase once more of the Riga vote starts coming in. Who owns the state? and ZZS are higher than in the exit poll so far, but some of that could be do to overrepresentation in the (rural?) areas counted first?

Some of this movement seems to be happening now. PAR up to 10.1%, ZZS down to 12.0%, KPV LV down to 14.2%. I guess the movement will continue in that direction, so it could be very close between several parties for 2nd. Right now, I think KPV LV looks like it could hold onto it?

[DavidB.]

So I'm on that page now, but I don't see how much of the vote is in. 658/1078 probably refers to municipalities but that doesn't tell us a great lot.

Interesting that PAR seems to be doing about as well in Kurzeme, in the West, as in Riga.

[Diouf]

Current seat distribution

[Lord Halifax]

So I'm on that page now, but I don't see how much of the vote is in. 658/1078 probably refers to municipalities but that doesn't tell us a great lot.

Interesting that PAR seems to be doing about as well in Kurzeme, in the West, as in Riga.

There are only 110 municipalities. It must be polling stations.

[DavidB.]

So a New Conservative + KPV LV + NA + Greens and Farmers government is at least numerically possible. But on AAD Politicus said that the New Cons and NA apparently have such a bad relationship that it may be difficult to have them join a coalition together.

On another note, it would be hilarious if the KPV LV guy became PM.

[Diouf]

The narrowing continues. KPV LV down to 13.8% and PAR up to 10.7%. New Conservatives are at 13.1% and with their quite equally distributed vote, they seem likely to finish 2nd in seats, even if they don't manage it in votes.

[DavidB.]

Seems like a disproportional amount of the vote currently in is from Russian-inhabited Latgale. Which probably means PAR and NA will still go up and Harmony will go down by a bit, exactly in line with the exit polls.

[Diouf]

KPV LV leader Artuss Kaimiņš says the party expect to get a lot of votes from expats in UK and Ireland, which apparently are yet to come in.

[Diouf]

PAR passes ZZS to enter 4th place. They are 11.000 votes behind New Conservatives in 3rd and 14.000 votes behind KPV LV in 2nd. That seems like a lot of ground to make up, although I guess Riga votes are still underrepresented in the current count. Haven't found any information about whether expats votes are counted today and how many votes are expected.

[DavidB.]

KPV LV leader Artuss Kaimiņš says the party expect to get a lot of votes from expats in UK and Ireland, which apparently are yet to come in.

Not an unreasonable expectation if he's right that it still has to come in. The similar Polish demographic (young men, working-class jobs, get their news about the situation "back home" from the internet) tends to give a disproportional share of the vote to Kukiz, which is different in some regards but similar enough.

Let's see if NA can still pass ZZS.

[Diouf]

KPV LV leader Artuss Kaimiņš says the party expect to get a lot of votes from expats in UK and Ireland, which apparently are yet to come in.

Not an unreasonable expectation if he's right that it still has to come in. The similar Polish demographic (young men, working-class jobs, get their news about the situation "back home" from the internet) tends to give a disproportional share of the vote to Kukiz, which is different in some regards but similar enough.

Let's see if NA can still pass ZZS.

Yep. Found the below comment on Latvian Radio. Google Translated.

"Currently, a quarter of the diaspora's vote is counted. The leader is KPV LV, followed by Development / Par. But the influence of the diaspora on the overall election results should not be overestimated, according to journalist Sallija Benfeld."