Local Election Campaign Costs Revealed
The four parliamentary parties all spent more on local election campaigns than they predicted they would, and more than they did four years ago.
Reform Party topped the spending charts with 1.9 million euros, but that figure also contained the “Uhke Eesti Üle” (Proud of Estonia) PR campaign this year, ETV reported on Thursday.
IRL also ran a pre-campaign in the form of a nationwide questionnaire, and put their spending at 1.1 million euros.
The Center Party spent a little over 830,000 euros, while the Social Democrats's tab was 700,000 euros before the October 20 local elections.
At the end of August, the Reform Party predicted that they would spend only slightly more than the 820,000 euros they spent at the 2009 local elections. IRL predicted campaign spending of around one million euros, the Center Party between 500,000 and 700,000 and the Social Democrats around half a million euros.
Half of individual candidates and a third of election unions have yet to publish campaign spending figures, despite a Thursday deadline to hand those financial reports to the party financing oversight committee,
The Free Patriotic Citizen union, which won three seats in Tartu, spent 10,000 euros, and Vabakund, also with three seats, declared a little over 5,000 euros. Statements from the capital's most successful election coalition, Free Citizen of Tallinn, are yet to be published on the committee's website.