6th October, Latvian elections

[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)

[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.

[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...

[DavidB.]

The map should be interesting.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[DavidB.]

The last vote dump (not sure if actually from the UK or Ireland) has indeed increased the gap between KPV LV, which are now well over 14%, and the New Cons; and NA has overtaken ZZS. Harmony now below 20%.

[DavidB.]

On current numbers the seat distribution would be:

Harmony 24
New Cons 16
KPV LV 15
NA 13
PAR 13
ZZS 11
New Unity 8

[DavidB.]

All votes are in. One seat shifted from Harmony to KPV LV.

Harmony 19.4%, 23 seats (-1)
KPV LV 14.3%, 16 seats (new)
New Conservative Party 13.6%, 16 seats (new)
PAR 12%, 13 seats (new)
National Alliance 11%, 13 seats (-4)
ZZS/Greens and Farmers 9.9%, 11 seats (-10)
New Unity 6.7%, 8 seats (-15)

[DavidB.]

Because of the fact that KPV LV is now equal with the New Conservatives in terms of seats (and was always bigger in terms of PV), Kaimins would now have the most legitimate claim to the position of Prime Minister in any coalition not including Harmony. And Harmony isn't going to be in the coalition.

Would place my bets on KPV LV and the New Cons and then some combination of NA, ZZS and New Unity with a majority - PAR seems less likely given the profile of KPV LV and the New Cons, but could also be included instead of any of these others, who really knows.