Despite claiming otherwise, all major Lithuanian parties suffered losses in local elections

Alvidas Lukošaitis from the International Relations and Political Science Institute of Vilnius University estimates that public electoral committees took around 8 percent of the overall vote, while similar structures in previous elections would normally perform only half that well.

“Nevertheless, every party will say it has won. However, after the direct mayoral elections, both the Conservatives and the Social Democrats have fewer mayoral seats, while the Liberals maintained the same number. Run-off election results show that in general the structural attitude towards parties as institutions of democracy is low. When we have elections where we can choose not only from political parties, a rather substantial share of votes go to the so-called non-partisan candidates and candidate lists,” he noted.

According to political expert Mažvydas Jastramskis, the biggest losers after the run-off elections remain the same as two weeks ago – the Labour Party and the party Order and Justice. Experts even call the defeat of the Labour Party’s mayoral candidates in Kėdainiai and Švenčionys, its long-time strongholds, a miracle.

However, the two parties are not expected to meet their political death any time soon. Lukošaitis believes that the Labour Party and the party Order and Justice will recover somewhat in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

“There is an unspoken rule which says that the Seimas elections add about 50,000-60,000 votes to what a traditional party received in municipal elections. The achievements of public electoral committees are overestimated, it was just a little shake-up. The major parties will be the main players in parliamentary elections. They will grow the number of their voters and the only question is how votes in general will be re-distributed,” Lukošaitis said.