Election Day Latest: Reform Maintains Lead with 96% of Votes Counted
ERR News will be tracking the progress and results of the parliamentary elections throughout the day. Check here for the latest developments.
All times given are local (GMT +2).
22:45: With 551,000 of the approximately 574,000 votes counted, the Reform Party has 28.8 percent of the votes, the Centre Party 22.9 percent, IRL 20.6 percent and the Social Democrats 17.2 percent.
22:30: As of this time figures from the Electoral Committee are giving Reform 33 seats in Parliament, the Centre Party 26 seats, IRL 23 seats and the Social Democrats 18 seats. The results represent about 90 percent of the votes.
22:22: The Electoral Committee's Facebook page reports that about 513,000 votes have been counted. ERR News' calculations put this at 89 percent of the ballots cast.
22:13: With about three quarters of the votes counted, the number of mandates each party has is as follows: Reform Party - 33 seats, Centre Party - 25 seats, IRL - 23 seats and Social Democrats 20 seats.
22:05: The Electoral Committee's Facebook page puts the results, as of 21:50, at the following: Reform - 29 percent, Centre Party - 21 percent, IRL - 21 percent and Social Democrats - 18 percent. The committee continues to have trouble reporting details on its own website.
21:55: After no new data appears on the Electoral Committee's website for over an hour, a committee representative at the Foreign Ministry says that the organization may be having a technical problem loading the information.
20:48: The National Electoral Committee reports the total voter turnout at 62.9 percent.
20:00: Counts of early and internet votes put Reform in the lead with 34 percent of the vote. IRL has come in with 23.8 percent, the Social Democrats with 18.3 percent, and the Centre Party is trailing with 14.3 percent. The results represent just over 207,000 votes, about 22.7 percent of eligible voters.
National Electoral Committee Chairman Heiki Sibul told ERR News earlier in the day that Estonia's e-votes don't tend to favor any particular party or political orientation.
"It's absolutely neutral. We examined this e-voting behavior with Florence University and European Council researchers, and one of the findings was that it's very neutral [regarding] which party someone prefers," he said.
17:08 At a press conference held at the Foreign Ministry, National Electoral Committee Chairman Heiki Sibul said that based on the sitation at 16:00, the committee expects the overall turnout figures to be very similar to those in 2007, when they were just shy of 62 percent.
16:21: Latest figures from the Electoral Committee show voter turnout at 53.9 percent, or 491,450 voters, as of 16:00. Voter activity is proving to be highest in the cities, with Tallinn and Tartu showing a 59.5 percent and 55.5 percent turnout respectively so far. The lowest percentage of eligible voters to cast their ballots has been in Ida-Viru County, at 46.8 percent. Figures include the 27.4 percent of the electorate that participated in early voting, including more than 140,000 who cast their votes via the internet.
12:27: The National Electoral Committee reports that 342,936 ballots have been cast as of noon, representing 37.6 percent of eligible voters. By comparison, only 32.3 percent had voted by noon in the previous parliamentary elections in 2007.