Polls suggest that one of Europe’s most radical political parties is the favourite to win Iceland’s October elections, that were called in the wake of the Panama Papers scandal.

The Pirate Party’s platform includes direct democracy, a new national constitution, government transparency, and asylum for US whistleblower Edward Snowden.

It also proposes to decriminalize drugs, raise taxes on the rich, pursue internet freedoms and copyright reform, arguing that there should be no limits on people’s rights to express themselves, unless doing so violates others’ rights.

In an innovative attempt to boost the youth vote, it is urging the company developing Pokemon Go in Iceland to turn polling stations into Pokestops.

It will field candidates in every Icelandic constituency and has been at or near the top of every opinion poll for over a year.

“It’s gradually dawning on us, what’s happening,” Birgitta Jónsdóttir, leader of the Pirates’ parliamentary group, told the Guardian. “It’s strange and very exciting. But we are well prepared now. This is about change driven not by fear but by courage and hope. We are popular, not populist.

Jónsdóttir said the party was willing to form a government with any coalition partner who subscribes to its agenda of “fundamental system change” – something the ruling Independence party has already ruled out.

“I look at us and I think, we are equipped to do this,” she said. “Actually, the fact we haven’t done it before and that we won’t have any old-school people telling us how, means we’ll do it more carefully. We will be doing things very differently.”

The party was founded four years ago by a group of activists and hackers as part of an international anti-copyright movement, and won 5% of the vote in 2013 elections, winning three seats in Iceland’s 63-member parliament.

The election, likely to be held on 29 October, comes in the wake of the resignation of Iceland’s former prime minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, after the Panama Papers leaks in April revealed that he had millions of pounds of family money stashed in offshore accounts.

Following some of the largest protests the small North Atlantic island had ever seen, the ruling Progressive and Independence parties replaced Gunnlaugsson with agriculture and fisheries minister Sigurdur Ingi Johannson and promised elections before the end of the year.