On the Lithuanian parliamentary election of 2020

The Lithuanian parliamentary election of 2020 concluded yesterday when the 68 of its 71 single member constituencies that had to undergo a second round of voting declared their results, with the proportional representation results having been finalised a fortnight ago.

The Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union (LVZS)-led coalition suffered a resounding defeat, even though coronavirus infection rates have been low in Lithuania (10,949 active cases, 136 deaths, with at least 6000 patients having recovered). LVZS only polled 18.07% and won just 32 seats, knocking it down to second place in seat terms as well as regarding vote share, with the conservative Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS-LKD) once again topping the poll. Given the fragmentation of Baltic politics, it was however unsurprising that their vote share was only 25.77%, representing an increase of just 3.14% on the 2016 elections, and their seat total came to 50, amounting to just 35.5% of the Seimas seats. It was LVZS' losses of single member constituencies, due to voters from the now defunct Order and Justice Party (which merged into the Freedom and Justice Party in June 2020) turning out for TS-LKD in the second round and many LVZS voters staying at home due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic; the effect was unsurprisingly more pronounced in major cities including the capital, Vilnius, and Lithuania's second city, Kaunas. 

It is important to remember that tactical anti-LVZS voting proved critical in the second round of single member constituency voting; 71 out of 141 seats in the Lithuanian Seimas are represented by single member constituencies (the other 70 on a single PR list), only 3 of those seats declared a winner in the first round, and the majority of them within the first round saw both the first and second place finishers poll less than 30% apiece. In fact the constituency of Traku-Vievio saw the LSDP (Social Democratic Party of Lithuania) top the first round poll with only 15.43% of the vote, which never happens in any French circonscription!

The Social Democratic Party of Lithuania, like so many social democratic parties around the world, continued to slide into the realms of minority players and on the way to political irrelevance. Far from recovering ground that it lost in 2016, it lost a further 4 seats to leave it joint-third with the Liberal Union; in terms of vote share it finished with 9.59%, putting it slightly behind the Labour Party (in reality a populist, liberal, oligarch party) in terms of vote share and leaving it with its worst result since 1996. A key reason for this was the founding of a splinter group, the Social Democratic Labour Party of Lithuania, which in fact had a very similar outlook to the LSDP. That party only polled 2.36% of the vote and only gained representation via single member constituencies, the three winners in question having once been LSDP members themselves. Another reason was that LVZS had essentially supplanted the LSDP as the opposition to TS-LKD in seats it could not win, even as LVZS governed. 

The populist Labour Party (DP) made a surprising recovery, having been almost wiped out in 2016 and subsequently losing many former members to the aforementioned Social Democratic Labour Party of Lithuania, and won 10 seats although only one of these was a single member constituency (it won 2 SMCs in 2016) and it polled 9.77%. The most successful new party was the socially liberal and pro-European Freedom Party, which split from the more moderate and classically liberal Liberal Movement last year. It won 11 seats of which 3 were SMCs; it overtook the Liberal Movement but outside Vilnius could not tap into the Liberal Movement's core supporter base, which is why the Liberal Movement won more seats on a lower list vote (7.04% as opposed to the Freedom Party's 9.45%). 

The Electoral Action for Poles in Lithuania (LLRA), in alliance with the Christian Families Alliance, paid the price for entering a coalition with the LVZS. Its vote share dropped to 4.97%, missing the 5% threshold for list seats by just 0.03%, or in practice just 2,361 votes. Its base is however heavily concentrated into three SMCs with a large Polish population, meaning it won two of them in the first round and a third, Nemencines, in the second round without any problems. Its support base is stable enough for Lithuania not to need to introduce reserved seats in the Seimas for ethnic minorities, as many Eastern European and Balkan countries do in their parliaments. The Centre-Party Nationalists, having been part of an unsuccessful Anti-Corruption alliance list in 2016, lost their only seat in the Seimas, with the Lithuanian Pensioners Party not even contesting the election. The Freedom and Justice Party, the closest successor to the nationalist right Order and Justice Party, lost all the list seats of its predecessor parties with just 2.06% of the vote and only narrowly won an SMC in the second round. Although the Lithuanian Green Party's then only MP, Linas Balsys, defected to the Social Democrats subsequently finishing a dismal sixth in with only 8.89% of the vote, they maintained their representation in the Seimas when former PM Algirdas Butkevicius won the constituency of Vilkaviskio in the second round. However, they found their support decreasing slightly from 2.06% to 1.7%, with them being unable to win over any significant number of disgruntled LVZS voters, despite both parties espousing green politics in different ways.

Of the political parties that failed to win a Seimas seat this year, the National Association polled best with 2.21% but did not come close to entering the second round in the election of any SMC. The anti-corruption Way of Courage, having been decimated in 2016, made only a slight recovery and polled just 1.18%, not nearly enough for any seats. The wooden spoon went to the Lithuanian People's Party, a pro-Russia socialist party whose founder, Kazimira Prunskiene, was the first Prime Minister of modern Lithuania from March 1990 to January 1991; they polled just 0.26% of the vote.

With voter turnout already being dire in Baltic elections, it was not surprising that the coronavirus pandemic caused it to drop even lower, to 47.8%, the second lowest in modern Lithuanian history, although then again turnout in 2016 was just 50.6%, and in fact turnout in the second round of voting actually improved by 0.6% on 2016. Lithuanian politics remains as fragmented as ever and at a minimum a three-party coalition will be needed, since the more urbane Homeland Union is not likely to pursue an alliance with the agrarian Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union. It is almost certain that the next government in Lithuania will include the Homeland Union, the Liberal Movement, and the Freedom Party.