His center-right partners, New Unity, are struggling to cross the 5% electoral threshold, which would be a floundering performance for a party that has been home to many Latvian prime ministers, including current European Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis.

But for the party’s prime ministerial candidate and ex-Finance Minister Arvils Ašeradens, the low polling numbers are simply the “political pendulum which shifts from one way to the other,” he told POLITICO in Riga last month.

During the last election in 2022, New Unity was the major beneficiary of a rally-round-the-flag moment as Russia had just launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But in 2026, voters seem frustrated with Latvia’s high inflation, the ongoing uncertainty surrounding national airline airBaltic and instrumentalized migration orchestrated by Russia and Belarus.

Kulbergs’ other coalition partner, the agrarian Union of Greens and Farmers (known as ZZS), is also polling below the threshold. And if neither party manages to scrape by, it might force Kulbergs to work with the controversial businessman Šlesers, who carefully advocated expanding trade with Russia.

Kulbergs has dismissed this possibility — “as it is given now: no,” he told POLITICO in early September — because he does not trust the people Šlesers has surrounded himself with. Just weeks earlier, however, he had been less definitive, telling POLITICO in July: “I have to see what chess pieces I will get … to make a coalition.”

Šlesers has been a central figure in Latvian politics for decades, most notably as a local “oligarch” who, via family holdings, exerts influence over the Port of Riga. The capital’s harbor has seen its largely Russian and Belarusian hinterland slowly carved off by EU sanctions.  And after Kulbergs slapped 300% tariffs on transited Russian grain this month , Šlesers told Latvian national TV such transit should be allowed, though he supports Ukraine’s EU accession.