Latvia held its last general election, for the 13th legislature of the Saeima on October 2018. The 2018 election brought about considerable changes compared to the two previous electoral cycles. The
SDP "Harmony" remained the single largest party losing only one seat compared to the 2014 election, as it would be expected from a party with such a fixed electoral base as the Latvian Russian-speaking minority. Harmony topped the polls in Riga, some surrounding cities as well as the more Russian-heavy south-eastern parts of the Latgale constituency.
The radical changes took place on the right-wing of the political spectrum, where the two parties that had dominated the right, the agrarian
Union of Greens and Farmers (ZZS) and the liberal-conservative
New Unity lost half and more than half of their elected members, respectively.
In their place, three new parties gained representation for the first time, the populist
Who Owns the State?, led by Artuss Kaiminš, an MP first elected in 2015 for the Latvian Association of Regions. KPV LV is a neoliberal anti-establishment populist party that seeks to appeal to a young, male constituency. KPV LV swept the rural parts of the country that in previous elections had voter for ZZS. Another new party is the liberal-conservative
New Conservative Party (JKP), founded by former National Alliance MP Jānis Bordāns. Lastly, the progressive liberal alliance of the Movement For! and Latvian Development contested the election together as
Development/For!, topping the polls in a few affluent suburbs of Riga.
Representation in the Saeima is rounded with the inclusion of the
National Alliance, a right-wing populist party first formed as a coalition of the right-wing LNNK and the far-right All for Latvia! in 2011.
Two parties that had been present in the previous legislature lost all their seats by failing to cross the threshold. One was the centrist
Latvian Association of Regions, which only gained 4.1% of the national vote share; and the other was the national conservative For Latvia from the Heart, that lost all 7 MPs it had gained in 2014 as its vote share crashed to 0.8%.
Government formation was complicated by the need to bring many parties together in order to prevent Harmony from being a part of the cabinet, a long-standing principle in Latvian politics, where the Russian minority interests' party is locked out of forming part of the national government, unlike say, in neighbouring Estonia. This is caused for instance by the fact that Harmony was an official partner of United Russian from its founding until 2017. Its main predecessor party, the Harmony Centre, had likewise been excluded from participating in national politics, due to, again, its perceived cosiness with Putin and ambivalent position on the Soviet occupation of Latvia.
Likewise, the agrarian ZZS was excluded from cabinet formation discussions, much like in 2011 and 2014 due to the party's perception as the tool of oligarch Aivars Lembergs, who finances the party.
Because of this, government formation took months until Krišjānis Kariņš was nominated on January 2019 to form a government composed of members from Development/For!, National Alliance, New Unity, the New Conservative Party and KPV LV.
The electoral system for the Saeima elections is pretty straightforward. The 100 members of the legislature are elected from 5 multi-member constituencies, roughly corresponding to each of the country's five 'cultural regions'. These constituencies elect anywhere between 12 (Kurzeme) and 35 seats (Riga). Latvian citizens voting from abroad are counted as voting in the Riga constituency. In order for a party to make it into the Saeima, it has to cross the national 5% threshold, otherwise, it is excluded - as it happened to the Latvian Association of Regions, despite topping the polls in two municipalities.