Social Democrats win round 1 of Lithuania's election and aim to oust the conservative leader

VILNIUS, Lithuania — The opposition Social Democratic Party has emerged as the leader after Sunday’s first round of national elections in Lithuania and says it will start negotiations to form a new government with left-leaning parties, which would oust the center-right coalition that has ruled for the past four years.

With 100% of votes of the first round counted on Monday, The Social Democrats won 18 of the first 70 seats to be decided in the 141-seat Seimas, one seat ahead of the ruling Homeland Union party of Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė.

In a second round of voting on Oct. 27, single-member constituencies will vote to choose between the two leading candidates from the first round.

Šimonytė’s government took office in 2020 and recorded economic success. However, strict COVID-19 measures and an influx of migrants cast shadows over her Cabinet. Šimonytė especially faced criticism for strict measures during the pandemic, with many complaining that her government didn’t do enough to help companies during lockdown and others saying thousands of people didn’t have proper access to health care services.

The head of the Social Democratic Party, Vilija Blinkevičiūtė, said she and the center-left Democratic Union, which took eight seats, would attempt to form a coalition and would support each other’s candidates in the second round. She was also to meet with the leadership of another center-left party, the Farmers and Greens Union, which won six seats.

Nemuno Aušra, a newly registered party of right-wing politician Remigijus Žemaitaitis, who was impeached earlier this year for making antisemitic statements, took 14 seats. The Social Democrats have ruled out any alliance with Žemaitaitis’ party. The final party to win seats was the Liberal Union, which took seven.

The results continue a historic pattern where voters tend to look a different way every four years.

“The so-called pendulum principle makes society shift from left to right and so on,” Margarita Šešelgytė, the director at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science in Vilnius, told The Associated Press. “Not a single time since the early 1990s have Lithuanians voted in two consecutive elections for the same party to run the country.”

Analysts say a shift to the left wouldn’t bring significant changes to the foreign policy of Lithuania, an EU and NATO member that borders Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave to the west and Belarus, a Moscow ally, to the east. The vote comes at a time when Russia’s war in Ukraine is fueling greater fears about Moscow’s intentions, particularly in the strategically important Baltic region.

Turnout was at 52.1%, up from 47.2% in 2020, according to official figures.