Party ratings: Support levels largely unchanged through summer so far
Support for Estonia's major political parties has remained virtually unchanged through summer so far, according to a recent poll.
The three coalition parties – Center, The Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) and Isamaa – have seen 47 percent support from respondents to the questionnaire, conducted by pollsters Norstat on behalf of the Institute for Societal Studies (MTÜ Ühiskonnauuringute Instituut).
The two opposition parties, Reform and the Social Democratic Party (SDE) enjoy 39.8 percent support, according to the survey.
Reform (34 Riigikogu seats) remains the most popular single party, on 31.3 percent of support, compared with 31 percent a week ago. Center (24 seats) is second on 24.5 percent, down from 24.8 percent last week, followed by EKRE (19 seats) on 16.9 percent, down from 17.4 percent a week ago.
Reform recently tabled a bill aimed at amending the Aliens Act to ease third country nationals' stay in Estonia for work or study, to year-end, in response to a labor shortage, particularly in agriculture. This was voted down at the Riigikogu Monday, however.
The top three parties are followed by SDE on 8.5 percent (no change on last week), non-parliamentary part Estonia 200 (8.4 percent – up 5 percentage points from last week) and Isamaa, at 5.6 percent (compared with 5.3 percent a week ago).
Overall there has been no major change since before midsummer (June 23-24) and support has remained static, Norstat says (see graph).
The Riigikogu broke up for summer on June 15, though convened in an extraordinary session for the Reform Party bill Monday.
Norstat conducted its survey – which reflects an aggregated of the period June 1-July 6 – by polling just over 4,000 Estonian citizens of voting age, and says it weights its surveys according to socio-economic indicators and using both online and phone surveys.
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, market research companies such as Norstat, Turu-uuringute and Kantar Emor often conducted surveys face-to-face as well, but the restrictions put in place during the March-May emergency situation have largely brought this to an end for now.
Norstat claims a +/- 1.55 percent error margin in its results.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte
