Latvian elections: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly… And Hopeful?

The recent Latvian parliamentary (Saeima) elections on 3 October brought good, bad, and ugly news; sadly, there was a lot of bad, but there is reason to hope.

The Good

Our Latvian member “Protests” elected a member of Saeima for the first time, Selma Levrence, who also served as a board member of CDN. The eight candidates from “Protests” received nearly 15,000 preference votes. Their allied party, the center-left Progressives, ultimately won 10 seats, taking their 10th by 6 votes. Especially important themes for the campaign were the cost of living crisis and the attempts to leave the Istanbul Convention on preventing violence against women and domestic violence, and how it intersects with the youth.

The Bad

The United List, a right-wing alliance affiliated with the ECR that prefers even more economic liberalization in a country already devastated by austerity, won 41 of the 100 seats, headed by Andris Kulbergs, a former member of the board of the employers' confederation. Because no party has ever held that many seats in democratic Latvia before, this marks a major shift. 

Even before the new Saeima is inaugurated, Kulbergs has already in effect canceled a streaming service tax that would support the Latvian film industry out of fear of American backlash, and is trying to put the general director of the employers' confederation at the head of the state chancellery. With right-wing and far-right parties now holding 80% of the Saeima, they will likely revisit the reduction in overtime and holiday pay bonuses they tried to push through last term.

The far-right populist party “Latvia First,” led by Ainārs Šlesers, a notorious oligarch, won 18 seats. By signaling support for a United List minority government, they could help get their policies through backdoor deals.

The Ugly

Voter turnout was the lowest ever recorded in a Latvian Saeima election, with just a bit more than half of the eligible voters voting. As a result, the United List took their 41 seats on the back of about 17% of the total electorate. 

Turnout has steadily declined since the 2008 economic crisis; since then, political apathy has risen as more people lose hope in all parties and the government. A 2025 SKDS poll shows that 53% of Latvians were dissatisfied with how democracy works, and a 2025 OECD study found that only 14% said that the political system lets people like them have a say in what the government does.

This is happening across Eastern Europe; for example, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which also just held local and presidential elections, only about 40% voted, a historical low.

…And Hopeful?

We, as CDN, congratulate Protests on their results. The next Saeima term will be hard with so many right-wing MPs, but we must remember that Protests already protected Latvians' rights when they were defending the Istanbul Convention. Andris Kulbergs and United List have already signaled they will not raise the issue of leaving the Istanbul Convention again, largely because of domestic opinion and the massive protests led by “Protests” last year.

Young people in Latvia stood with Protests defending the Istanbul Convention; now they stood behind the ballot box and voted for their allies, protecting Latvia's democracy.