Altogether, 324 candidate lists have been submitted with 5,599 candidates running for one of the 683 spots across 41 municipal councils.
Normally, the biggest share of candidates would be taken by capital Rīga, but given that Rīga already held elections in 2020, it will not participate in the 2021 election. The highest number of candidate lists this time is for Ropaži municipality with 14 lists and Jūrmala with 13.
Of the 5,599 candidates 61.4% are male and 38.6% are female, almost identical proportion to the previous elections in 2017. The youngest candidate is aged 18 and the oldest is aged 91. The majority, or 68.8%, have higher education.
99.9% of the candidates claim to be Latvian citizens, but there are also three US citizens, two Lithuanians, and one person each with Finnish, Bulgarian, Irish, Russian, Lebanese, Lithuanian and Spanish citizenship.
In 2017, when Latvia's territorial reform had not yet been implemented, there were 118 municipal councils (excluding Rīga) and 1,554 seats for deputies. Thus, the number of seats has decreased by 56%.
In 2017, 599 lists and 8,945 candidates ran in the local government elections.
More information about local government elections is found on the CVK website.
