Estonian Parliamentary Election, 3rd March 2019

[DavidB.]

Even if the government does win a majority, it would seem very unwise for Pro Patria to continue with Center and SDE, unless they want to be annihilated electorally by EKRE and Reform.

[DavidB.]

That's a hell of a gender gap.
https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1100136535423414272

At 8 PM yesterday, 21.5% had already voted early.

[DavidB.]

Almost 40% have already voted early (many of them online), up from 33% in 2015. Reform overperform in the early and online vote, Center and EKRE on election day.

The last Kantar poll has Reform at 27%, Center at 25% and EKRE down four points at 17%.

[DavidB.]

It's interesting how turnout in Eastern Europe rises, once countries and their people get wealthier ...

Seems to have much more to do with the extensive possibilities for early voting in Estonia, which are increasingly well-known to the public.

Slovenia and Poland are among the more wealthy countries in Central and Eastern Europe and also among the countries that have the lowest turnout (Bulgaria has higher turnout than Poland). Montenegro, on the other hand, has pretty decent turnout (in the 70s). Turnout in many places in Western Ukraine tends to be in the high 70s; across the border, in much richer Slovakia and Poland, it is much lower.

Turnout mostly seems to be negatively affected by a) extensive corruption and b) the existence of a broad sense that ideology doesn't play a real and meaningful role in politics - of course, the two are interconnected. Hungary had high very high turnout by CEE standards (70%) because the ideological difference between Fidesz and the opposition was so clear. On the other hand, widespread clientelism can also drive up turnout (suspecting this is the case in Montenegro).

Countries that have more "fluid" party systems seem to have lower turnout too, as voters are less connected to parties. But this doesn't explain all cases (such as relatively low turnout in Poland, where corruption is relatively low compared to other countries in the region, ideology matters, and the party system isn't all that fluid).

[DavidB.]

Turnout at 12 was 47% compared to 42% in 2015.

[DavidB.]

57.2% had voted at 4 PM compared to 56% in 2015. Kind of disappointing that the promising turnout increase seems to be evaporating on e-day.

Low turnout on e-day should be good news for Reform, who overperformed by a lot in the early vote, and bad news for Center and especially EKRE.

[DavidB.]

Compared to 2015, turnout in Ida-Viru county at 4 PM was down by 6 points at 41.6%. This is the Center stronghold in the northeast of the country, bordering Russia and harboring many ethnic Russians. Lack of enthusiasm for Center among Russians after their stint in government?

[DavidB.]

Is somewhere pls the live tv coverage?

No idea, but results should appear here. ERR.ee should have live coverage. Polls are closing in 10 minutes.

[DavidB.]

Polls have now closed according to ERR. But there will be no exit poll and the hall behind the reporter seems empty, so perhaps the party just starts a bit later.

In the meantime I found this Election Compass. The options range from completely agree to completely disagree (from left to right), with "no opinion" as the farthest option on the right.

My result:

EKRE 73%
Free Party (Vabaerakond) 69%
Pro Patria (Isamaa) 69%
Reform 62%
Eesti 200 61%
Richness of Life 59%
Center 55%
Green 54%
Social Democrats 50%



Without pluses and minuses for the importance of statements they are all between 56% and 67% agreed, with the Greens and the SocDems at 56% and Eesti 200 at 67%.

[DavidB.]

Apparently Reform leading candidate Kaja Kallas just did a 180 on whether Center is their preferred coalition partner. Kallas now says they're not. They also exclude EKRE, so I wonder what they think would be their alternative path to 51.

[DavidB.]

Apparently Reform leading candidate Kaja Kallas just did a 180 on whether Center is their preferred coalition partner. Kallas now says they're not.

Did they state that it would be their preferred partner beforehand? I just saw her ruling out EKRE as a coalition partner. Which basically leaves Centre, or a return to SDE+Isamaa if E200 does not come in. Would not be particularly clever if they ruled out one of them as well.

Hmm, I thought so, but can't find it anymore. Perhaps it was not a 180 after all.

Center prefer a continuation of their coalition with SDE and Pro Patria.

This should be the internet vote. As expected, but Center somewhat weaker and Reform somewhat stronger:

Reform 40%
EKRE 13.5%
Pro Patria 12.6%
Centre Party 11.7%
Social Democrats 11.4%
Estonia 200 5.5%

In 2015 this was:

Reform 37.5%
Pro Patria 17.2%
Social Democrats 16.9%
Free Party 12%
Centre 7.7%
EKRE 6.9%

[DavidB.]

Offline votes are coming in pretty quickly now. Reform down to 37.2%, EKRE up to 15.1% and Center to 13.4%.

[DavidB.]

Reform 36.8% - 43
EKRE 15.4% - 16
Center 13.7% - 14
Pro Patria 12.6% - 13
SDE 11.2% - 11
E200 5.2% - 4

Doesn't bode well for E200.

[DavidB.]

Reform 35.4%, EKRE 15.9%, Center 15%, Isamaa 12.4%, SDE 11.1%, E200 5.1%. We're going to see E200 dip under the threshold pretty soon. Center will overtake EKRE as expected.

[DavidB.]

ERR.ee has preliminary results by district: https://news.err.ee/916323/updated-live-preliminary-results-by-party-district-mandates-candidates.

[DavidB.]

235 polling stations out of 451 in, and E200 now below the threshold. EKRE still performing strongly, going to do better than the 17% expected in the poll of polls. Isamaa doing pretty well too:

Reform 34.1%, EKRE 16.6%, Center 16%, Isamaa 12.4%, SDE 11%, E200 4.9%.

[DavidB.]

Center have now overtaken EKRE.

Turnout was 63.1% (-1.1%). Disappointing.

[DavidB.]

329/451 in, Center now really starting to gain steam. EKRE not gaining as much anymore, so perhaps the 30 or so polling stations that just came in were from Tallinn.

Reform 31.5%, Center 19.2%, EKRE 17.4%, Isamaa 11.9%, SDE 10.5%, E200 4.8%

[DavidB.]

Still a lot of polling stations in Tallinn, but also to the Southwest of Tallinn where Reform and EKRE are doing very well. Thinking Center will end up in the low-mid 20s, Reform in the high 20s and EKRE around 18%.

[DavidB.]

The southwest has flipped from Reform to EKRE.

[DavidB.]

Comparing to 2015 number of votes:

10 639 votes left in Tallinn 1
28 878 votes left in Talinn 2
13 926 votes left in Tallinn 3

So around 53.443 votes left. And Centre gets what, half of them?

Tallinn 1 was 34% Center, 25% Reform in 2015.
43% Center, 22% Reform in Tallinn 2.
30% Reform, 24% Center in Tallinn 3.

But that includes early votes (not sure if it includes internet votes though), so yes, Center should still gain quite a lot. Maybe enough to get to their 2015 result, but I don't think so.

[DavidB.]

Isamaa are doing pretty well, so most of the EKRE vote seems to come from the Free Party and... SDE?

[DavidB.]

I can't see election results at polling place level, but unless turnout is way down, more than 8 000 votes lleft in North-East, so perhaps Narva or somewhere like that, where I guess Centre will get 75-80% of election day vote?

3 out of 36 polling stations left there... but turnout was only 48.2% there.

[DavidB.]

399/451

Reform 30%, Center 21.3%, EKRE 17.7%, Isamaa 11.6%, SDE 10.2%, E200 4.6%

[DavidB.]

At this pace Center definitely aren't reaching their 24.8% from 2015. They're going up by 0.2% every five polling stations or so. With about 45 polling stations left they'd be around 23.5%.