This Saturday, 3 October, Latvians are heading to the polls to elect the 100 members of their parliament, the Saeima. Since the last parliamentary election in 2022, the office of the prime minister of Latvia has seen three different residents leading three different governments. Waiting for yet another new government to be formed after this Saturday’s elections might very well be a test of patience.
After the October 2022 parliamentary election, the liberal-conservative political alliance of then-Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš, New Unity (JV-EPP), emerged victorious, winning 19% of the votes. Kariņš, who had served as prime minister since 2019, went on to head a three-party coalition with the conservative United List (AS-ECR) and the national-conservative National Alliance (NA-ECR). The coalition fell and Kariņš resigned as prime minister in September 2023 after months of controversy surrounding the indirect presidential election in May 2023. The candidate put forward by JV was rejected by AS and NA, but was ultimately elected with the votes of the agrarian conservative Union of Greens and Farmers (ZZS~RE|S&D) and the centre-left Progressives (P-G/EFA).
Kariņš was followed by fellow party member Evika Siliņa who in September 2023 took over the role as prime minister in a new three-party government featuring the trio from the presidential election; JV, ZZS, and P. While the government faced stark internal disagreements regarding financing for the national airline airBaltic as well as whether to pull Latvia out of the Istanbul Convention on preventing violence against women, it continued to work together until May 2026, when it decisively collapsed over disagreements over how to respond to a series of military drones entering Latvian airspace from Russia.
After the fall of the Siliņa cabinet, AS’s Andris Kulbergs formed a new government and took over the role of Prime Minister in a new four-party coalition – consisting of AS, JV, ZZS, and NA – a mere four months before the scheduled elections. Kulbergs first entered politics when he was elected to parliament in 2022 and has proven to be popular with many voters due to his effective use of social media in public communication.
Kulbergs heading the coalition has given AS a significant boost in the polls, with the party going from 10% in February to an average of 24% now. That rise is especially notable since 2026 will only be the second ever election in which the United List has competed. The party alliance was founded in 2022 by the Latvian Association of Regions (LRA→EPP), the Latvian Green Party (LZP-*) – a former member of the ZZS alliance – and the local Liepāja Party (Liepāja-*) from Latvia’s third-largest city and came third in that year’s election, winning 11% of the vote.
Gains and Losses
A win for AS this year will mean losses for the other parties in the centre-right bloc. JV, occupying the prime ministerial chair for seven consecutive years before Kulbergs’ takeover, is seen among large parts of the population as the party most responsible for delayed and unsuccessful government reforms. It faces large losses this Saturday, polling at around 7%, down almost two-thirds from its 2022 election result.
The National Alliance has also taken a hit with the rise of AS, dropping from a polling high of 17% last spring to just around 9%. Meanwhile ZZS has been shaken by a number of scandals regarding senior politicians. In May of this year, Armands Krauze, the then-minister of agriculture and chair of ZZS, was temporarily detained by the Latvian anti-corruption forces in an ongoing corruption case. He was subsequently removed from office by then-Prime Minister Siliņa. In September, less than three weeks before the election, another senior ZZS member, Minister of Welfare Reinis Uzulnieks was detained while driving with a blood alcohol level of 3.5 per mille and, likewise, fired from his ministerial role. The party currently polls at 8%; however, the latter incident happened during the fieldwork period of the last poll conducted, and it has yet to be seen what impact it has on ZZS’s standing.
The Progressives, having unsuccessfully contested the 2018 parliamentary elections, saw themselves represented in the Saeima for the first time after the 2022 elections and spent almost three years in government during Evika Siliņa’s tenure. The party has been especially vocal in opposing last year’s attempts to remove Latvia from the Istanbul Convention – a proposal that sparked the largest protests Latvia had seen in more than 15 years. P is now polling between 10% and 12%, having received 6% of the vote in 2022. Depending on the election outcome, the Progressives might seek to enter government again after the elections — a possibility made difficult due to large disagreements with the national-conservative National Alliance and the United List on questions concerning immigration as well as LGBT+ and women’s rights.
The right-wing Latvia First (LPV-PfE), spearheaded by oligarch Ainārs Šlesers, has spent the last four years in opposition, solidifying and strengthening its public support. First elected to the Saeima in 2022 with 6% of the vote, the party is now seeking to possibly double its 2022 election result, standing at around 13% in polls. While most current government parties are not keen to work with them on forming a government – in part due to the party’s openness to relaxing financial sanctions on businesses dealing with Russia despite its war in Ukraine – LPV hopes to be able to join the next government. While JV and P have categorically refused to cooperate with the party to form a government (and LPV likewise declined cooperating with them), AS, NA, and ZZS have all offered differing, unclear or no answers at all – and LPV might seek to join a conservative government with AS and NA.
The Christian conservative alliance between Sovereign Power and the Alliance of Young Latvians (SV/AJ-*) has in the last year and a half risen rapidly in the polls – from polling at around the 5% hurdle last summer to now being the second largest party in Europe Elects’ poll average, standing at 13%. SV/AJ is one of the most openly pro-Russian alliances this election season, advocating for reestablishing business ties to Russia and canceling financial and military aid to Ukraine. Furthermore, politicians from the Latvian Russian Union (LKS~NI) are running on the SV/AJ list this election. Thus, the alliance seems to attract many voters from Latvia’s Russian-speaking population; however virtually all parties have ruled out cooperating with them to form a government.
Russian-speaking voters have previously rallied around the social-democratic Harmony Centre (SC-S&D), which, after becoming the largest party in the 2018 elections and winning 20% of votes, endured a series of internal power struggles and ultimately, with the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, failed to cross the 5% threshold in the 2022 elections. Since then, the party has largely failed to regain significance, and is currently averaging a polling result around 2%. In 2022, many former SC voters left for centrist For Stability! (ST!→NI), a more radically pro-Russian party, that received 7% in the election. Their parliamentary group has since fallen apart, and its founder and de facto leader, Aleksejs Rosļikovs, who served in parliament from 2022–2025, is currently embedded in legal proceedings, after being accused by state security forces of inciting ethnic hatred, and – upon facing arrest – fled to Belarus this spring, where he has branded himself a political refugee. Between participating in talk shows on Belarusian state propaganda television and promoting “friendship” between Latvia, Belarus and Russia, he is actively campaigning ahead of Saturday’s election on social media, in which he is himself running. His party is polling at around 3%.
Election aftermath
Despite polls giving certain hints at what an election result could look like, few things are certain, and observers will have to be patient, as not much is expected in the immediate aftermath of election night. Incumbent Prime Minister Kulbergs is likely to be handed the mandate to lead negotiations to form a government should his United List emerge as the largest party as polls suggest. The next government will most likely see multiple parties of the current coalition return to their ministries in central Riga. The central question is whether Kulbergs will choose to try and form a government including the more liberal bloc, JV and P, or, together with NA, involve LPV in a coalition – either as a coalition partner or as a confidence-and-supply partner in a minority government.
Coalition talks in Latvia usually take months, however, and experience shows that leading the first round of coalition negotiations does not mean one is poised to succeed. In 2018, two candidates failed to form a coalition before Krišjānis Kariņš was finally successful three and a half months after the election. In 2022, government formation talks took two and a half months. This time around, it may take just as long.
