The Reform Party has been in power in Tartu since before the turn of the millennium, while current mayor Urmas Klaas has been in charge for 11 years now.

Reform's support has fallen nationwide to a record low of 11 percent this month, according to a recent poll, and while the party continues to perform ahead of this in Tartu, the rating even there has dropped to a little over 20 percent, down from over 30 percent as recently as May, according to pollsters Norstat.

Reform's main competitor in Estonia's second city is Isamaa.

"In previous years, the Reform Party's support was nearly 40 percent, so they shaped the political landscape," political scientist Martin Mölder of the University of Tartu's Johan Skytte Institute said, adding that while Isamaa has streaked ahead in recent months, the gap is starting to narrow again.

"As of now, it will probably turn out that the Reform Party will not achieve as good a result as in the previous local elections in Tartu, and we can also likely forecast that Isamaa will achieve a significantly better result than in the previous local elections. Around July here, the gap between the two widened by more than 15 percent, in favor of Isamaa. Right now, we are slowly seeing that the support levels are equalizing again," Mölder added.

As to the reasons for this loss in support for Reform even in a city where it has traditionally been dominant, Mölder said that this did not have much to do with local politics, and was more the outcome of national politics and the recent exit from office of Reform in Tallinn.

There has also so far been no single divisive issue in Tartu which would clearly set the two parties against each other, Mölder observed.

"When you look specifically at Tartu's local [party] programs, they are very detailed lists of individual things that need to be done here and there, at the local level. The Reform Party has spelled things out a bit more, Isamaa a bit less, so it is difficult to point out any major difference here," Mölder added.

Kantar Emor research expert Aivar Voog meanwhile said the sample size for Tartu in the surveys they have conducted so far is too small to accurately assess party support in the city, though compared with the previous local elections, the picture is, in his words, more interesting nevertheless.

"Coalitions may arise there which the Reform Party may be left out of. That is a quite likely scenario, where Tartu is very mixed up, and certainly its people's preferences for habit will also play a part. At the same time, that habitual option of the Reform Party's image has come under a very strong blow right now and is in a very critical condition, so those two aspects make the Reform Party's position very unpredictable, as to what will become of Tartu. It will definitely be very interesting what the result in Tartu will be. And very difficult to predict," Voog added.

Mölder too noted things are generally wide open in Tartu when it comes down to it.

"Overall, I think the distribution of seats in the Tartu city council will turn so that very, very many different coalition combinations will be viable. The two big winners will likely be the Reform Party and Isamaa. The Center Party, Social Democrats, and EKRE will get somewhat fewer seats. An outlier black sheep is Parempoolsed, who are currently below the 5 percent threshold, but the likelihood that they too will get into the council is entirely possible, and that would make the picture even more complex. It will be very exciting in Tartu, I think," Mölder went on.

Tallinn too is likely to be a fairly open field. While the Center Party is seeing a surge in support, the ratings suggest this has not happened to a large enough extent to match the electoral dominance Center had enjoyed for nearly two decades, until leaving office in the capital in April 2024.

The local elections polling day is October 19.

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