Estonia’s Chancellor of Justice, Ülle Madise, has been officially registered as candidate for president, ERR reports. Altogether 75 out of 101 MPs nominated Madise, who was the only candidate registered, ERR reported. Madise will need 68 votes to be elected president in the parliament, the Riigikogu, in the first round on 2 September 2026. She has cross-party support from MPs of the ruling coalition’s Estonian Reform Party and Estonia 200, the opposition’s Social Democratic Party and Fatherland, as well as several independent MPs. Meanwhile, Martin Helme, leader of the opposition Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (EKRE), continued to push the presidential candidacy of the party’s founder, Mart Helme. The opposition Estonian Centre Party’s chairman, Mihhail Kõlvart, suggested that his party’s MPs would not vote in the election in the parliament at all, characterising the process as an “appointment.”
In a new Norstat poll for the Institute of Societal Studies (YI), 43% of respondents supported and 36% opposed Madise’s election as Estonia’s next president, ERR reported. Another 21% did not respond. Meanwhile, 70% of respondents would prefer direct presidential elections, while 22% opposed the idea and 8% were undecided. Speaking in a long interview with ETV, Madise defended the current Constitution, under which the president is elected in the parliament, ERR reported. MPs select a candidate that they recognise as an impartial arbiter, and switching to direct elections would require granting more power to the president, moving away from parliamentary democracy towards a presidential system, she explained. Direct elections would not, in fact, produce a more popular president, Madise warned. Estonia’s current constitutional order ensures that no one can make major decisions alone, she said.