The populism fell on its face again in Estonia.

 Estonia's progressive, liberal (which is not a curse word there) center-right party (Reform) won big in the 2023 Estonian parliamentary elections. In the typically diverse party spectrum, Reform captured 31% of the votes, which is enough to secure 33 seats in the 101-member parliament.

It is worth noting that in Estonia, math rules, as with 31% of the vote, one can obtain around 30% of the seats.

The following populist far-right party (EKRE) received only half as many votes, at 15.8%, which will likely translate to 17 seats. All other parties (six parties entered the parliament) received fewer votes.

In accordance with Estonian political traditions, intense coalition negotiations will now take place. The ruling and apparently re-elected Prime Minister of the Reform Party, Kaja Kallas, will now have to find a partner or partners with whom she can form a minimum of a 50+1 parliamentary majority.

In Estonian political culture, there is a strong tradition of coalition negotiations. This culture is very similar to the Dutch, Belgian, and Swedish systems, where continuous compromise-seeking is the norm and the most diverse range of coalitions come and go. Everyone has already been with everyone, and it also happens that coalitions fall apart between two elections and are replaced by a different composition. Continuous negotiation and compromise-seeking are the norm, rather than monolithic blocks dominating the political space on the basis of winner-takes-all. There are advantages and disadvantages to this.

There is only one exception (so far), the populist far-right party, which nobody was willing to form a coalition with for a long time, and they were always excluded from any negotiations as outcasts. However, a few years ago, the uniquely composed Centre Party made a big move by joining forces with the far-right party (thus making them a government factor) and managed to surpass the Reform Party, which had won the election (again).

The elections were held a few days ago (on March 5th, 2023), and now the analyses are coming out. From my point of view, what is clearly visible even from a distance is that populism is declining in Estonia, and conservative parties are also losing ground. Mostly liberal and left-leaning parties won, although I would like to qualify this a bit. The winning Reform Party is much more right-leaning in its political ideology, especially if we consider its strongly (even extremely) market-friendly views. The modern Estonia is undoubtedly built on this ideology. However, if we consider the belief in today's democracy, respect for the rule of law, and international embedding, then the Reform Party is much closer to left-leaning parties than to national conservative parties, which are also liberal in their economic policies, but rather isolationist.

In this field, there is a blatant (in my view) protrusion of Estonian populism built on the Trump and Orbán models. Although they are now the second-largest force in parliament, they have received fewer mandates overall than in the previous four years. In other words, their second place is much more about the failure of the other parties than about their own progress.

This is a very important phenomenon because Estonian voters have sent a clear message about the direction they want to see the country's future. The populists have thrown in all the known tricks (nothing new). They create an enemy image, maintain a constant fighting spirit, handle facts flexibly, practice emotionally appealing politics, organize large rallies, and are present on the streets. The latter is almost unique in Estonia, where there is no tradition of large street political rallies.

In addition, the Ukrainian war has greatly affected the Estonians; the country is full of Ukrainian refugees. They provided weapons and humanitarian aid worth 2% of GDP to the Ukrainians, and after COVID, they also faced huge problems with runaway inflation, primarily due to skyrocketing energy prices. For a while, the country was a leader in Europe in terms of inflation, but another country has taken the lead today (which country could it be?).

However, these difficulties have not pushed the country towards extremism (meaning populism) but, on the contrary, they are moving in the opposite direction, catching up with common sense, and able to count and eat with a knife and fork.

I also want to emphasize a small but essential slice of this year's Estonian parliamentary elections. In a way that is not strange for the Estonian digital society, it has been possible to vote online in the country for many years. The number of voters was high in absolute terms (63.7% - the highest value since 1992), but even more meaningful is that 51% of the votes (i.e., half) were cast online. This is a higher ratio than ever before.

Now it is known that voters who vote online tend to vote for liberal parties because their voters are younger, more open to technological innovations, and they represent modern Estonia. Two-thirds of the votes that went to the winning party were cast online. In contrast, only a third of the votes of the populists, who typically mobilize the older age group, were cast online. It is not surprising that the far-right has criticized the election results (as usual). For years they have been fighting (in vain) to abolish online voting (which they cannot do) because it is not a genuine vote.