Three years ago, the main axis of political confrontation in Estonia ran between liberals and the radical right. Then-Prime Minister Kaja Kallas led the Reform Party into the election saying their main opponent was EKRE and won the election decisively.

Public debate polarized voters into choosing between two camps: on one side, a liberal, pro-European and pro-Ukraine camp; on the other, a radical right, euroskeptic camp with a more ambivalent attitude toward Russia.

This was nothing unusual, but rather reflected the political divide spreading across Europe more broadly. Though perhaps with one important difference. Elsewhere in Europe, this led to the formation of broad rainbow coalitions where parties with very different worldviews entered government together. Estonia, by contrast, has been governed by an unusually ideologically unified coalition, especially after Kristen Michal became prime minister and ousted the Social Democrats.

The result has been interesting. For many of Europe's rainbow coalitions, governing together has proved difficult because compromises have to be made that satisfy no one. In the end, this has boosted support for radical right parties in opposition. In Estonia, an ideologically unified coalition has been able to govern, yet the outcome is still one where nobody seems satisfied — only in this case, it is more moderate opposition parties such as Isamaa and, increasingly, the Center Party that have benefited in the polls.

I believe Estonia's distinctive outcome can be explained more by personalities than ideology because opinion polls on preferred prime ministerial candidates also suggest that Isamaa and the Center Party have made significantly more popular leadership choices than the current governing parties.

And yet political leadership and finding support for one's decisions ultimately depend on ideological arguments, which raises the question of what the core ideological positions in Estonian politics will look like in 2026.

Opinion polls show that Isamaa and the Center Party currently enjoy substantially stronger support than the other parties. These are two parties that historically represented one of the main dividing lines in Estonian politics, but which now govern together in Tallinn and have themselves acknowledged that they are united by socially conservative values.

In some ways, this points to a recentralization of Estonian politics, perhaps even a decline in polarization. Less clear is what this new ideological center actually represents and what kinds of conflicts will form around it. In multiparty systems where governing requires coalition partners, certain alliances usually begin to take shape already during the election campaign. All parties compete with one another, of course, but there are opponents with whom direct conflict is sought and then there are others with whom disagreements on certain issues simply remain polite.

In my view, the biggest question mark shaping the conflicts of the coming election campaign is how Isamaa positions itself. It is obvious that Isamaa mainly defines itself in opposition to the governing Reform Party and Eesti 200. But does that include ideologically? While the Center Party criticizes the government coalition largely from the left — for example over the absence of a bank tax or the socioeconomic impact of climate policies — Isamaa's positions are much vaguer.

Criticism from Isamaa chairman Urmas Reinsalu is primarily technocratic: he criticizes the lack of a clear fiscal policy plan or ineffective governance. There is even a certain irony in hearing such criticism directed at the Reform Party–Eesti 200 coalition, which itself promised responsible fiscal policy, good governance and long-term planning. One gets the impression that Isamaa may not differ all that much ideologically from those currently in power.

That does not mean Isamaa lacks an ideology. Quite the opposite, in fact. I would argue that Isamaa has been one of the most successful policy-project parties in Estonia over the past decade. It has managed to implement clearly ideological promises — whether restricting voting rights or effectively making the funded pension system voluntary again — while at the same time serving either as a junior coalition partner or even as an opposition party.

What will the party's next key promises be and is it possible to lead national politics this way as the prime minister's party?

These two policy examples themselves illustrate well how many different forms conservative ideology can take. Reforming the funded pension system is more characteristic of a libertarian strain of neoconservatism in the spirit of Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan, emphasizing that the citizen is above all a consumer and that consumers themselves make the decisions that best serve their interests — even though, in the end, the choices offered by policy tend to stack the deck in favor of certain large corporations.

Restricting voting rights, by contrast, stems more from a national conservative mindset, which in this case takes on more radical overtones when a minority group is portrayed as a security threat. Conservatism, then, can have many different faces. And I believe there are plenty of voters who supported one of these changes but not the other.

With 296 days remaining until the next election, Estonian politics is calmer, less polarized and more conservative in its outlook than during the previous election cycle. But it is still too early to say what kind of conservatism we are talking about or what the substantive ideological conflicts in the coming election campaign will ultimately be.

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