Hello everyone! For those of you interested in the Latvian parliamentary election in on October 1st (especially those of you able to vote), [I’ve put together a comprehensive guide to the election](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FnCznxvsmc6X-6qOXpZoEvHwwUEFEOHOd-9X6VG4M5w/edit?usp=sharing) that can help you better understand the parties that are running in the election. You can find it at the link below. How it works:

* Column “A” has the party “number”. This is the number (out of 19) that was randomly drawn for the party by the central election committee, and the order in which its ballot will appear. It is not indicative or anything else.

* Column “B” has the name of the political party in Latvian. I have only the Latvian names because many of them don’t have an official name in English, and it will be easier to look up the parties that way if you want to learn more.

* Column “C” has the amount of candidates that are running on their ticket. A full ticket throughout all five electoral districts (Kurzeme, Latgale, Rīga, Vidzeme, Zemgale) consists of 115 candidates. As you can see, some parties have significantly less than that on their ballots.

* Column “D” has the results of the party in the previous (2018) parliamentary election. As you can see, there are a number of parties that did not run in the previous election. Party #17 “Apvienība Latvijai” consists mostly of the remains of KPV.LV which ran in 2018. In addition, party #18 “APVIENOTAIS SARAKSTS” consists partially of “Latvijas Reģionu apvienība” which ran seperately in 2018.

* Columns “E” through “G” show the parties’ current poll ratings. The opinion polling data of the SKDS firm (which works together with LTV) is shown in column E. FACTUM, which is another independent firm which uses a somewhat more holistic method to determine ratings, is shown in column F. Column G is an aggregate of the two. I will update these columns if and when more recent polling data is released before the election.

* Column “H” shows the party’s official party leader. PLEASE NOTE that this does NOT necessarily mean the same thing as the party’s prime minister candidate, which some parties do not officially have, or which some parties have a different candidate than their official leader. The data for the leaders I have checked with the parties’ entries on Lursoft.

* In the remaining columns, I have translated each of the parties’ official political platforms that were submitted to the central election committee, and I have organized them into different “issues” or “topics” so that it would be easy to compare them between parties. Almost all platforms also have a “preamble” which I have included as well, and some also have a “conclusion” section. To expand any of the sections, simply hover over them with your cursor.

This has taken a significant amount of time to put together, so I hope that you find this useful and interesting! If you have any suggestions or notice anything that looks wrong, please let me know! Also, my friend Otto and I have recorded an episode of the Latvia Weekly podcast that analyzes the information on here that will hopefully be up by the end of the day or tomorrow.

Take care, and make sure that those of you who are able to get out the vote!

The guide is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FnCznxvsmc6X-6qOXpZoEvHwwUEFEOHOd-9X6VG4M5w/edit?usp=sharing

2 comments

  2. It`s incredible that you get like 5 normal parties and the rest are just like crazy.

    At least, I think this election will be more normal than 2018.

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