Estonia’s once-dominant liberal parties are facing irrelevance, while the opposition has regrouped and seems poised to win in large parts of the Baltic state.
On 19 October 2025, voters in Estonia will head to the polls in local elections across the country’s 78 municipalities. As important as the results will be in the capital, Tallinn, the impacts are expected to be felt in local councils across the entire country and drastically reshape the political map.
The parties of the current government, now consisting of just the liberal Reform Party (RE-RE) and Estonia 200 (E200→EPP), only earn 14% of the public’s support, according to Europe Elects’ polling average. At the same time, the national-conservative Isamaa (I-EPP) has risen to an average of 27%, the highest level of support in the party’s history. Similarly, the right-wing Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (EKRE-PfE) stands at 15% and the centrist Estonian Centre Party (KE-RE|ECR) has rebounded from a low of 11% in February-March 2024 to 19% — the highest level of support the party has seen since 2022. The party landscape has also been diversified by the emergence of the centre-right Right-Wingers (PP→EPP).
The 2023 national parliament election resulted in a third cabinet led by Prime Minister Kaja Kallas (RE-RE), consisting of her liberal RE, E200, and the centre-left Social Democrats (SDE-S&D). These three parties continued to govern under Prime Minister Kristen Michal (RE-RE), who succeeded Kallas in 2024, but in doing so made history as the government with the lowest combined polling support of any in Estonia’s post-Soviet era.
The rather abrupt decline of the long-dominant Reform Party has shaken Estonia’s political landscape and plunged the country — once seen as a bastion of liberal politics — into uncharted territory. The party’s decline stems from a systematic weakening of its public perception on several key policy pillars. Equally as abrupt has been the swift revitalisation of the Centre Party. Both stories are expected to have a noticeable impact on the local election results in the country’s most populous battleground — the capital, Tallinn.
Reform Party’s first pillar: fiscal competence and low taxes
The 2023 election was mostly concentrated on national security issues and Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion. The focus on those topics helped the Reform Party win a historic result, as it had built credibility on those issues over several decades. The 2023 election saw the Reform Party earn the highest share of the popular vote for a single party in post-Soviet Estonian history.
However, cracks within the party’s electorate soon formed — especially over financial matters. When the incoming government revealed that the country’s finances were in a worse shape than previously thought, it sought to address the bloated budget deficit by raising taxes. This, however, did not go down well with Reform Party and Estonia 200 voters who have traditionally favoured lower taxes.
Simultaneously, E200 started to slowly lose its image of being a new outsider force, exacerbated by a poor response to a foreign aid embezzlement scandal involving one of its MPs.
Reform Party’s second pillar: ‘tough on Russia’ foreign policy
Despite its reputation for fiscal prudence being eroded, the Reform Party still maintained considerable public credibility on foreign policy and dealing with Russia. However, in August, news broke that Prime Minister Kallas’ husband was still doing business in Russia, despite her having only months before come out strongly against companies involving themselves with business activity in Russia.
Meanwhile, the Estonian opposition began to regroup. The two-time foreign minister and former leader of Isamaa, Urmas Reinsalu, returned to the party’s helm and shifted its focus to economic matters. Isamaa had historically earned itself a similar reputation of fiscal competence and toughness on Russia, but had largely declined as a political force. EKRE had been siphoning away its more conservative voters, while the Reform Party had overshadowed it on those two matters.
However, with the Reform Party’s image shattered, Reinsalu’s return was perfectly timed to take advantage of voters looking for a tried-and-tested moderate party that would be both hawkish on Russia and keep taxes to a minimum. Isamaa was also able to win over some notable political names from the Centre Party, following several defections from the party and a collapse in popular support. These developments led to Isamaa skyrocketing to first place in the polls. Today 25% to 30% of decided voters say they would vote for Isamaa in a parliamentary election.
Reform Party’s third pillar: stability
While its support fell below 20% — a historically significant low — the Reform Party looked to have stabilised by the end of 2023. With Kallas ascending to the position of High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy in 2024, many in the Reform Party hoped that new party leadership would reinvigorate the public’s support. Although this did not happen, the party also did not further lose support.
In 2025, the Reform Party and Estonia 200 expelled the Social Democratic Party from the government, blaming the party for holding up certain decisions and proclaiming that the post-Social Democratic government would take more explicitly economically right-wing decisions.
However, this decision did not lead to a poll bump either.
The instability generated by this, along with a botched political move against Tallinn Mayor Jevgeni Ossinovski (SDE-S&D), shredded the Reform Party’s trump card. For all the damage the shattering of the previous two pillars might have caused, the party was still able to argue that at least it had kept the ship stable, both in Tallinn and on the national level. But by undermining its coalition partners in the hopes of political success, the Reform Party’s manoeuvres in 2025 made it difficult for voters to trust that the party would not make a complete 180° in another attempt to repair its polling numbers.
By the summer of 2025, the Reform Party had plunged to just 10% in the Europe Elects polling average.
The return of the Centre Party and the local elections
In April 2024, the decline of the Centre Party seemed inevitable and permanent. Since then, however, the Centre Party has managed to recover some of the support it had lost since the 2023 election, climbing to second place in the Europe Elects polling average. Most of this was due to factors beyond the party’s control, or as some have put it, other parties helping the Centre Party regain its footing.
In late 2024, the national parliament began seriously debating the restriction of local election voting rights to Estonian and EU citizens only. This would effectively disenfranchise non-citizens and citizens of Russia and Belarus. The move was opposed only by the Centre Party, which helped the party win back ethnic Russian voters and has seen its support among Estonia’s Russian community reach levels in some polls not seen since the late 2000s, under the leadership of Edgar Savisaar.
The disenfranchisement debate has seen the Centre Party's political situation improve enough for it to now be able to threaten the current governing coalition of Tallinn. Were the party to regain the mayoralty, it would mark a significant reversal in its local political trajectory. After almost 20 years of rule in Tallinn, the Centre Party was ousted in 2024 through a successful vote of no confidence in Mayor Mihhail Kõlvart (KE-RE|ECR).
Still, polling in Tallinn has the election as a toss-up between a bloc made up of the Reform Party, Isamaa, Social Democrats and the Right-Wingers versus the opposition Centre Party and EKRE. At the same time, Isamaa has not ruled out a coalition with the Centre Party (neither have the Right-Wingers, but it is hard to see where the Centre Party and the Right-Wingers would find sufficient overlap to cooperate). It is possible that after the election, Isamaa or EKRE may accept an invitation from the Centre Party to form a two-party coalition and govern the city.
Nationally, independent nonpartisan electoral coalitions and Isamaa are expected to secure sweeping victories, including in the traditional strongholds of other parties. In Tartu, where the Reform Party has been dominant for decades, Isamaa is threatening to wrest control away.
Meanwhile, the Right-Wingers are expected to use this election to further bolster its credibility as an electorally viable force for the next national parliament elections. For Estonia 200 on the other hand, the local elections seem to represent a final chance before the next national parliament election to prove it still can be politically relevant. Should Estonia 200 falter, the party could see parliamentary defections that could even force early snap elections. If the party can retain its seats in either the city councils of Tallinn or Tartu, it might be able to avoid sliding further down the death spiral.
It is still early to say whether Isamaa could permanently supplant the Reform Party in Estonian politics. But October's local elections will present another stepping stone for Isamaa after the party’s triumphant performance in the European Parliament elections last year. As for the Centre Party, it will be another opportunity to prove that the bell many began to toll for the party after its decline in 2023 was premature. If it can reassert its position of leadership in Tallinn, the party could go on to play a key role in the next national parliamentary elections.
