Lativa legislative election - 4 October 2014

[politicus]

Prognosis based on one third counted:

Harmony 23.46%
Union of Greens and Farmers 22.77%
Unity 22.15%
All For Latvia-For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK 14.75%

For Latvia from the Heart 7.53%
Alliance of Regions of Latvia 6.05%

Russian Union of Latvia 2.06%
United for Latvia 1.25%.

All other parties under 1%

[politicus]

Prognosis based on 60% counted:

Harmony 25.2%
Union of Greens and Farmers 20.2%
Unity 20.1%
All For Latvia-For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK 15.5%

For Latvia from the Heart 7.1%
Alliance of Regions of Latvia 6.2%

Russian Union of Latvia 1.9%
United for Latvia 1.2%
For Latvia's Development 0.9%

All other parties still under 1%

[Famous Mortimer]

Wikipedia page has finally been updated and there's two new interesting pieces of information.

1) The Reform Party basically merged into Unity.

2) Alliance of Regions of Latvia is a coalition including the Latvian Social Democratic Workers' Party, Latvia's generic social democrat party.

[Famous Mortimer]

Come to think of it, given that the Unity list includes a bunch of Reform candidates, their performance, even if they hold onto second place, is pretty poor. Unity and Reform together won a little under 40% of the vote in 2011.

[Nhoj]

Wikipedia page has finally been updated and there's two new interesting pieces of information.

1) The Reform Party basically merged into Unity.

2)  is a coalition including the Latvian Social Democratic Workers' Party, Latvia's generic social democrat party.

Mulling around the latvian wikipedia well using translate has got me this.

Alliance of Regions of Latvia prime minister candidate is some economist who was previously in For Fatherland and Freedom / LNNK.

[politicus]

Come to think of it, given that the Unity list includes a bunch of Reform candidates, their performance, even if they hold onto second place, is pretty poor. Unity and Reform together won a little under 40% of the vote in 2011.

Add Hearts, they are roughly the same place on the ideological scale.

You could - very roughly - divide the six big ones as:

Centre-Left: Harmony
Centrist/Centre-right: Regions, Farmers/Greens
Mainstream Right Wing: Unity, Hearts
Far Right: National Alliance

[politicus]

Straujuma says she will talk with his two current coalition partners about it before she may invite other parties into the government, she thinks Hearts is out of the question. Regions says that they want in government.

Public policy center "Providus" researcher Iveta Kazoka says:

- "Unity may lose its decisive role as the support for the Union of Greens and Farmers and All For Latvia-For Fatherland And Freedom/LNNK (VL-TB/LNNK) has increased - as has their influence in the coalition."

- "Unity should not perceive the results of the election as a victory. Instead, the party should analyze why its supporters were not mobilized enough".

- "The support for the Greens/Farmers Union has returned to the 2010 level, whereas VL-TB/LNNK seems to have won over voters from Unity"

- The situation in the new Saeima may be more complex than in the current parliament because two new parties has been elected to parliament - For Latvia From The Heart and the Alliance of Regions of Latvia - both with ambitious leaders.

So all in all fairly bad for Unity, even if they stay in charge.



So Straujuma may get even more reason to look like this...

[Famous Mortimer]

The current coalition (Unity, Farmer/Greens, National Alliance) have 55% of the vote. They shouldn't have to bring on any more coalition partners.

Still, it's odd they ruled out For Latvia From the Heart. Maybe there was some truth to them being "left-wing"?

[politicus]

The current coalition (Unity, Farmer/Greens, National Alliance) have 55% of the vote. They shouldn't have to bring on any more coalition partners.

Still, it's odd they ruled out For Latvia From the Heart. Maybe there was some truth to them being "left-wing"?

Co-chairman Raivis Dzintars from National Alliance says they want as broad a coalition as possible and would welcome Regions.

Regarding Hearts, Straujuma just refered to "things" their leader Inguna Sudraba had said which made it impossible (no specifics).

[politicus]

The Central Election Commission will first announce the final result at a press conference at 4PM local time (2GMT) today.

[Famous Mortimer]

The Guardian is now also reporting that For Latvia From the Heart is a left-wing and Russian party.

It's hard to tell if this is actually true or this is just a game of telephone with a bunch of reporters paraphrasing each others mistakes because there a very few foreign reporters actually in Latvia.

Here's an article about Inguna Sudraba's statements when she founded Hearts:

http://www.baltic-course.com/eng/legislation/?doc=91118

Very negative about the government but also very vague and not really that outrageous.

Interestingly she also says she's not close to any other party but singles out Harmony in particular as a party she is not close to.

[Famous Mortimer]

Also, just like in the EU elections, Harmony Centre didn't contest (I guess they don't exist anymore?). It was just the Social Democratic Party "Harmony" (formerly the National Harmony Party). So all the crypto-Communists (ie Alfrēds Rubiks' kids) are gone from the new parliament, leaving only the moderates.

[Famous Mortimer]

Yeah, Sudraba was appointed auditor by Prime Minister Aigars Kalvītis of the People's Party. There's no way she's left-wing. It's possible (just possible, I'm guessing) she criticized the government on austerity but that doesn't make her left-wing any more than Berlusconi is left-wing.

[Famous Mortimer]

Also, just like in the EU elections, Harmony Centre didn't contest (I guess they don't exist anymore?). It was just the Social Democratic Party "Harmony" (formerly the National Harmony Party). So all the crypto-Communists (ie Alfrēds Rubiks' kids) are gone from the new parliament, leaving only the moderates.

Actually I take this back. Artūrs Rubiks was on the Harmony list.

[politicus]

Prognosis based on 98% counted:

Harmony 23.3% (25)
Unity 21.6% (23)
Union of Greens and Farmers 19.7% (21)
All For Latvia-For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK 16.5% (17)

For Latvia from the Heart 6.9% (7)
Alliance of Regions of Latvia 6.5% (7)

All other parties still far under the 5% threshold.

This is unlikely to change much, so Unity in 2nd and 63/37 for the coalition. A solid win, but not for Unity itself - incl. Reform Party they had 43 seats in the old Saeima, so Latvian sources also consider it a big loss.

Central Election Commission says no less than 43% of the Saeima will be new, that's a very high turnover.

[politicus]

Politologist Janis Ikstens to LETA about Latvia's Regional Alliance clearing the threshold:

"Nothing indicated that this will happen, as this company consists of eight or nine people with differing ideologies"  

He explains their success with the fact they were represented by strong political leaders in specific regions.

Both National Alliance and Farmers seem to want them in the government.

[politicus]

Harmony lost six seats.

Politologist Janis Ikstens says Harmony's inability to affect decisions on a national level was one of the reasons why a number of voters turned away from the party.

He believes that a large number of dissatisfied voters who voted for Harmony Center last time has switched to For Latvia From the Heart, which has a  large number of Russian-speaking members.

His colleague Ojars Skudra speculates that the reason for their loss is the so-called "social democratic project" that has changed the party's image and pushed more conservative people over to parties like Greens and Farmers' Union or For Latvia From the Heart.

He adds that one of Harmony's mistakes was that it allowed the other parties to compare it to Putin's United for Russia - which signed an agreement with Harmony.

So it seems even Harmony as the only centre-left option had conservatives among their voters last time. Must be conservative Russophones voting for them as the Russian option and now switching to bi-ethnic Hearts.

[politicus]

One possible reason why Hearts can't get into the government, while Regions can, could simply be that Hearts is bi-ethnic. So the "no-Russians in office"- rule would apply.

[politicus]

Small changes to the result:

Harmony gets 24 (one down)
Alliance of Regions of Latvia gets 8 (one up)

All others unchanged from the 98% poll.

Saeima speaker and Unity party leader Solvita Aboltina didn't get in, but Unity party's board has decided to keep her as leader.

[politicus]

Harmony leader Nils Usakovs says that since his party earned the most mandates in the election President Berzins ought to entrust Harmony to set up the new government!

He explains the relatively poor election result by the fact that they for the first time ran as a social-democratic party - Harmony - not the broader Harmony Centre alliance, but thinks that this choice will pay off down the road.

Usakovs stress that one third of their MPs are now ethnically Latvian.

[politicus]

Link to the results.

1046 of 1054 polling stations counted.

[Famous Mortimer]

Found a website with some interesting profiles of parties. The one with the most new information is about the Regional Alliance:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://www.lsm.lv/en/article/features/guide-to-2014-saeima-elections-the-parties-part-2.a99580/

[Famous Mortimer]

Harmony lost six seats.

Politologist Janis Ikstens says Harmony's inability to affect decisions on a national level was one of the reasons why a number of voters turned away from the party.

He believes that a large number of dissatisfied voters who voted for Harmony Center last time has switched to For Latvia From the Heart, which has a  large number of Russian-speaking members.

His colleague Ojars Skudra speculates that the reason for their loss is the so-called "social democratic project" that has changed the party's image and pushed more conservative people over to parties like Greens and Farmers' Union or For Latvia From the Heart.

He adds that one of Harmony's mistakes was that it allowed the other parties to compare it to Putin's United for Russia - which signed an agreement with Harmony.

So it seems even Harmony as the only centre-left option had conservatives among their voters last time. Must be conservative Russophones voting for them as the Russian option and now switching to bi-ethnic Hearts.

Just curious, where are you finding all this commentary?

[Famous Mortimer]

It seems likely Harmony lost some votes to the Greens and Farmers as well. Their Prime Minister candidate was Aivars Lembergs, a prominent oligarch who was active in the Communist Party in Soviet times. Lembergs is actually a member of a very small third party in the Greens and Farmers alliance called For Latvia and Ventspils. Ventspils is the city Lembergs is mayor of and it has a large Russian minority. Lembergs also opposes NATO membership, a stance even Harmony doesn't take.

[politicus]

Just curious, where are you finding all this commentary?

LETA

EDIT: Willips I think you should rewrite/edit the write-up on the OP taking the info we now have into consideration. It would make the thread easier to read for new readers.