Vilija Blinkevičiūtė, leader of the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (LSDP), said on Monday that her party won Sunday's local elections.
"I can say with confidence that we, the Social Democrats, won the municipal elections, because we have as many as ten mayors elected in the first round, twice as many as in the previous elections in 2019," Blinkevičiūtė told a news conference.
"We also have the largest number of members on municipal councils: 357 seats across all 60 municipalities, which is 100 seats more than in the previous elections," she added.
The LSDP won 274 seats, including those of mayors, four years ago.
Blinkevičiūtė noted that around 11 LSDP contenders will compete in the March 19 run-off mayoral elections.
The LSDP leader played down the failure of Social Democratic mayoral candidates in Vilnius and Klaipėda to make it to the run-off round.
"We have councillors in all major cities and this is certainly a better result than in the previous elections," she said.
Blinkevičiūtė said the Social Democrats' victory in the local elections is important for next year's parliamentary elections.
Figures from the Central Electoral Commission show that the LSDP on Sunday won 17.5 percent of the vote nationwide. Ten LSDP mayors were elected outright in the first round, and 14 Social Democrats are heading to the run-off round.
‘Good overall’
The follow-up party with 16.2 percent of the votes, the ruling conservative Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS-LKD), said the results were good.
"We are particularly satisfied with the results in the big cities, ie Vilnius and Klaipėda where we'll still have runoffs," Radvilė Morkūnaitė-Mikulėnienė, the head of the party's political group in the Seimas, told reporters on Monday
This year, 65,700 voters in Vilnius voted for the TS-LKD, compared to 34,000 voters four years ago.
The 16-percent result is unchanged from 2019 when the conservatives secured 274 seats, including mayors.
Liberals expect 10 mayoral seats
A leader of the Lithuanian Liberal Movement said on Monday that the party is pleased with its performance in Sunday's local elections and expects to have mayors in ten municipalities.
"We were pleased with the results [...]. The Liberal Movement's numbers are growing. We are at number one or two in as many as 12 municipalities," Edita Rudelienė, the first deputy chairperson of the party, told reporters.
The Liberal Movement expects to have ten mayors after the March 19 run-off round, improving the 2019 result, according to Rudelienė
.
"Today we see that people are returning to traditional parties and that trust in them is growing," she said.
The Liberals failed to cross the minimum threshold to be allocated seats on the city councils of Vilnius and Kaunas, but won three seats in Klaipėda.
The Liberal Movement received 7 percent of the vote nationwide, up from 5.9 percent in the previous elections in 2019.
The party increased its number of council seats to 142 in Sunday's elections, from 126 four years ago.
Four Liberal candidates won the mayoral races – in Plungė, Joniškis, Rietavas and Tauragė – in the first round and six others made it to the run-off round.
Polish minority party confident
MEP Waldemar Tomaszewski, leader of the Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania–Christian Families Alliance (LLRA-KŠS), said he had no doubt the party’s candidate, Waldemar Urban, will be elected mayor of Vilnius District.
"Everybody understands that with such a large support, there can really be no change", Tomaszewski told a news conference on Monday.
Urban received 46.63 percent of the vote in the first round, well ahead of his closest challenger, Social Democrat Robert Duchnevič, with 24.84 percent.
In the previous elections, Maria Rekść of LLRA-KŠS was elected in the first round.
Tomaszewski said that the results of Sunday's first round were good for the party, with more votes than in 2019.
"We had 59,000 votes and 5 percent in the previous elections, and 5.5 percent and about 65,000 votes in these elections. This is a significant improvement," he said.
Tomaszewski noted that the LLRA-KŠS won 55 seats in Vilnius District overall.
"In Vilnius, we not only maintained our position, but we also strengthened it. Seven seats are of considerable weight," he said.
According to the official figures, the party received 5.34 percent of the vote in the first round. In the city of Vilnius alone, 38,900 voters supported the party, up from 19,900 in 2019.
Four years ago, the LLRA-KŠS won two mayoral races, in the districts of Vilnius and Šalčininkai.
Read more: ‘We expected better results’: Freedom Party fails to secure mayoral seats
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