How the Riigikogu's 101 seats are allocated

On 7 March 2027 Estonia elects the 101 members of the Riigikogu. The Estonian ballot differs from that of many European countries: you do not mark a party, you write the number of one candidate standing in your district (or pick one from the list if you vote online). That vote counts both for the person and for their party. Only Estonian citizens aged 18 or over can vote.

Seats are allocated in three stages, set out in § 62 of the Riigikogu Election Act. We explain them with the official figures from 2023, the most recent election.

Before the vote: how many seats each district has

Estonia is divided into 12 electoral districts. Their number of seats is not fixed: before each election the National Electoral Committee shares out the seats according to each district's number of voters (§ 7). For 2027 it will do so by 6 January 2027 at the latest. In 2023 districts had between 5 seats (Lääne-Virumaa) and 16 (Harju County outside Tallinn, together with Rapla County).

The simple quota

In each district the number of valid votes is divided by the number of seats. The result is the simple quota: how many votes a seat "costs" in that district. In 2023 it ranged from 4,924 votes in Ida-Virumaa to 6,699 in Jõgeva and Tartu County (excluding the city of Tartu).

Stage 1: the personal mandate

A candidate who gathers at least one simple quota on their own is elected, whatever their party's result across the country. In 2023, 9 candidates managed it. The most voted was Kaja Kallas, with 31,816 votes in district no. 4: almost five quotas.

Stage 2: district mandates

Only parties that win at least 5% of the valid votes nationwide take part here (30,515 votes in 2023). The votes of all the party's candidates in the district are added up, and the party receives one seat for each full quota, plus one more if the remainder reaches 75% of a quota. Personal mandates count towards these seats.

These seats do not follow the order chosen by the party but personal votes: the list's most voted candidates are elected, provided they have at least 10% of the quota. In 2023, 75 seats were allocated this way, including the 9 personal mandates.

Stage 3: compensation mandates

The seats not allocated in the districts (26 in 2023) are shared out nationally among the parties above the 5% threshold. A modified d'Hondt method is used: the divisors are 1, 2^0.9, 3^0.9, 4^0.9 and so on, and for each party as many of the first divisors are skipped as the seats it has already won in the districts. Because these divisors grow more slowly than those of the classic d'Hondt method (1, 2, 3, 4…), the method favours larger parties slightly more.

These seats do follow the order of each party's national list, skipping those already elected and those who did not reach 5% of their district's quota.

The 2023 result, party by party

The "From districts" column includes the 9 personal mandates. The split between district and compensation seats is our own calculation from the official data; each party's total number of seats is official.

Isamaa shows what compensation seats are for: its votes were spread across the whole country and the districts gave it only 3 seats, but the national allocation gave it 5 more.

Left without seats were the Vasakpartei (2.4%), Parempoolsed (2.3%), the Rohelised (1.0%) and the 10 independent candidates (1.0% between them). In all, 6.6% of valid votes went to lists or candidates that won no seat.

Three practical consequences

Your vote for a candidate matters within the party. In the districts, personal votes decide who gets in, not the party. A candidate high on the national list may get in through compensation, but in the district the one with more votes has the edge.

A district's seats are not guaranteed to that district. Ida-Virumaa had 6 seats in 2023 but only 3 of its candidates were elected (2 through the district and 1 through compensation), because many votes went to an independent and to a party that fell short of 5%. Leftover seats go to the national pool: Tallinn's district no. 1, with 10 seats, ended up with 13 MPs elected from among its candidates.

The threshold is national. A party that is very strong in a single region does not get in unless it reaches 5% nationwide, except where one of its candidates gathers a full quota alone. No independent was elected in 2023 and, according to ERR, none has ever succeeded in a Riigikogu election.

What is not yet known about 2027

How many seats each district will have (decided by 6 January 2027) and who the candidates will be (registered on 26 January). When they are published, we will update this analysis and the election guide.