As of Wednesday, seven candidate lists have confirmed their participation in the local government council elections in Narva, including four political parties and three electoral alliances. Even if just half of them end up elected to the city council, that would still make for complicated coalition talks.

"This will mean that forming a coalition will be difficult," acknowledged Narva Mayor Katri Raik (SDE). "Incidentally, we're currently on our seventh coalition in four years. That's certainly not normal — it's highly unstable and extremely challenging from a city development perspective."

According to Raik, the strongest contenders for ending up sharing power in Narva this fall lie with three lists: her own electoral alliance Katri Raik's List, the Center Party and the electoral alliance Mihhail Stalnuhhin's People's List. But predicting anything is difficult, since Russian citizens are no longer eligible to vote this time, and others may simply not turn out.

"The question is how many people will even turn out to vote," said Jaan Toots, the Center Party's lead candidate in Narva.

"We've tried to explain to the public — no matter how they vote, the important thing is that they do vote," he continued. "As we've seen in past elections, Narva has had the lowest turnout overall. Last time, it was just 42 percent, and now a certain percentage won't be able to vote at all. So things could be looking pretty grim."

Mihhail Stalnuhhin declined to share any updates regarding his list's election prospects. The political party KOOS is likewise keeping its election plans under wraps. Others planning to submit their own candidate lists in Narva include the Parempoolsed, the Reform Party and the electoral alliance City Pulse.

Messurme Pissareva, a candidate on Reform's Narva list, said they won't make promises they can't keep.

"We're bringing a political alternative to Narva, and economic opportunities," Pissareva said. "In other words, we're doing ordinary work with people and the people."

In the previous local government council elections in 2021, Narva had 43,000 eligible voters. This fall, with Russian and Belarusian citizens no longer eligible to vote following a constitutional amendment passed earlier this year, the Northeastern Estonian border city will have 15,500 fewer voters.

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