Estonian Parliamentary Election, 3rd March 2019

[IceAgeComing]

Around a month away: I'll do a more detailed effort post on the background of the election as far as I can gather soon.  Because I'm lazy I'm going to copy and paste my post on it from AAD.

So as Latvia settles down; we shift towards another Baltic election as Estonia votes in early March. I'll try to post a big post on this in the future but in quick summary: in 2015 the Reform Party (the liberal party; one of the primary forces behind Estonia's very liberal economic policies) topped the poll and managed to form a coalition with the Social Democrats (who're questionably social democratic; although they were willing in the past to resign from government or let themselves be sacked so they aren't totally spineless) and Pro Patria (a right wing party who're the subject of a merger between two parties that were the typical Baltic new hot things for a while before dying). In 2016 after the three parties didn't get on the junior partners booted out Reform and instead formed a government with the Centre Party (who're also a Liberal party; tend to be more to the left, more populist and get a large chunk of their support from the Russian minority which is why they were treated like Harmony for a long time until they knifed long time leader Edgar Savisaar for someone more popular with the other parties) under Jüri Ratas. Not much has really changed in terms of government policy I think: I admit to not following Estonia quite as closely as I should but I'll try to read up a little if I have time between work stuff.

Estonian polling is of dubious value: the current opinion polls all show generally a close contest between both Reform and the Centre Party for the position of biggest party and between government and opposition.

The main change is the growth of EKRE who're a... rather dodgy right-wing populist party with links to not very nice groups in America - perhaps one of their more memorable things was advocating for "the correct teaching" of the Nazi occupation. In the last election they got around 8% of the vote and finished sixth; in this election they're polling at near 20% and are the clear third place party behind the big two. The main issue for the government is that both their junior partners have fallen in support quite strongly: the Social Democrats are around 10% and Pro Patria are polling near the threshold of 5%. There are a couple of other parties worth keeping an eye on: E200 is one of those weird technocratic mass movement type deals which is probably comically corrupt: former Pro Patria leader Margus Tsahkna has joined them and seems to be their only real big name; and the Greens have flirted with the threshold at times and seem to be the only Green party in the region that actually cares about the environment and isn't obviously just the machine of a rich person which is probably why they've not been in the Estonian parliament since 2011.

I'm also pretty sure that Estonia is the only EU country where the top two parties are members of the same European Party - Centre and Reform are both members of ALDE. Doesn't mean that they get on with each other though!

[IceAgeComing]

So apparently there are the normal Greens (Estonian Greens), and Richness of Life which is another Green party?  I don't understand why Richness of Life exists, they'll probably just stop the regular Greens from breaking the threshold...

They exist because their leader (Artur Talvik; he led the Free Party list at the last election despite not being a party member, then he joined and became leader, and then he resigned to form his own party: which is entirely typical for the region - as is him not standing as the parties PM candidate for some reason) wanted his own political force and for no other reason.  The region historically has had a lot of these sort of parties (weird vague populist centrist parties who stand for nice sounding things like direct democracy or anti-corruption: and then inevitably die when it turns out they don't practice what they preach) and I'd less look at their stated ideology and more where their leaders came from.

From what I can gather they aren't polling well at all so they may well not get anywhere close - the voting system in Estonia lets people vote for candidates and if an individual candidate gets enough votes to win a seat then they get in despite thresholds: and since Talvik is their only candidate of note he might just get in by himself.

[IceAgeComing]

EKRE is clearly where Pro Patria are worried about their votes going; certainly being involved in government while the UN migration pact is a thing isn't helping them.  Although Reform also would have supported it so in some ways they'd be in the same situation regardless and there were reasons why they booted Reform out of office earlier on.