Last week’s party approval ratings: Bad news for the coalition
The Center Party is the big winner, Reform comes in second. The Social Democrats find themselves neck and neck with the Free Party and far-right EKRE, and IRL is quietly trailing off.
A poll for ERR conducted by Turu-Uuringute AS last week showed that the Conservative People's Party (EKRE) now enjoyed almost as much public support as the Social Democrats and the Free Party.
The governing coalition got a total of 37%, with Reform at 17%, the Social Democrats at 13%, and junior partner IRL at a discouraging 7%.
The opposition’s rankings were very clearly dominated by the Center Party with 26%, followed by the Free Party’s 13% and EKRE’s 12%.
Despite EKRE’s gain in popularity, the results of the poll showed no great change in the general political landscape compared to 2015. The Center Party’s leading position remained the same, and the shift on the conservative side mainly affected IRL. The party, formerly one of the political heavyweights, continued to lose ground to the Free Party and hard-right-leaning EKRE.
Three years away from the next national elections, the political parties’ approval ratings are of little consequence to the daily news, and of no consequence at all to the current distribution of seats in the Riigikogu. At the same time, the polls are the only feedback the government and parties get on current attitudes in the population, which is why they get a lot of attention whenever a new one is published.