Youth turnout in Estonia’s Riigikogu elections did not reach 50% — ERR News
In Estonia, 46% of people aged 18 to 24 voted in the 2023 parliamentary elections. Experts link the relatively low participation of young people primarily to a lack of trust in parties and a feeling that politics is disconnected from everyday life, ERR News reports.
Elections seem abstract to young people
Alar Kilp, a lecturer in comparative politics at the University of Tartu, noted that turnout rises with age. According to him, people who own property, have higher incomes or have school-age children are more dependent on political decisions and therefore vote more actively.
Kilp also believes that young people place greater value on forms of political participation that produce tangible results. By contrast, electing representatives and protecting interests through them may seem too abstract, long-term and unrelated to specific consequences for young voters.
Henri Härm, president of the University of Tartu Political Science Society, said that young people respond better to politics when another young person speaks about it. In his view, there are not enough young politicians who could raise the issues of their generation, while those who do exist often differ little from one another.
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Trust in parties and political education
Helene Kristine Viita, chair of the board of the Estonian National Youth Council, stressed that the key issue is trust: whether a young person is convinced that their vote can change something. She referred to the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study, according to which young people trust scientists, the Defence Forces and the police more than political parties.
In the previous Riigikogu elections, turnout among voters aged 18–24 was 35%, meaning that it increased by more than 10 percentage points over four years. At the same time, this figure has consistently not exceeded 50% in parliamentary elections.
Young Isamaa politician Sandra Laur believes that politicians should speak to young people in simple and direct language rather than resorting to bureaucratic wording. She also proposed strengthening civic education in schools by including media literacy, economic literacy and financial literacy. Young Social Democrat Romet Soer, for his part, considers classes in which students could formulate and argue their own political views important.
In the most recent local elections, the number of voters aged 18 to 24 rose from 12,000 to nearly 16,000. Youth turnout in the 2025 local elections also increased by nearly 10 percentage points compared with the 2021 elections.
