Party ratings: Center see rise in support after Ratas' resignation

Support for the Center Party rose more than that of any other political party in the aftermath of Jüri Ratas' resignation as prime minister last week, a recent survey found. Support for the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE), in office with Center but now excluded from the latter's coalition talks with Reform, fell the most over the same period.
The survey, conducted by pollsters Kantar Emor, covered the period January 14-19, and starting a day after Ratas' resignation, which he announced in the early hours of January 13.
While Reform remains the most-supported party overall, with 27 percent of respondents picking it first, their new bedfellow Center's rose by three percentage points to 19 percent, and two places in the rankings, between December and January.
Non-parliamentary party Eesti 200 remains in third place on 17 percent, down one percentage point on the previous month, while EKRE's fell from 17 percent in December to 14 percent in the latest Kantar Emor survey.
Support for the opposition Social Democratic Party (SDE) remained relatively static at 8 percent, while coalition-soon-to-be-opposition party Isamaa saw a slight rise in support, despite finding itself out-of-office following Ratas' stepping down, increasing one percentage point to 8 percent over the same period.
The support of the other parties remained the same or changed little. The support of the Social Democratic Party was eight percent in January, similar to December.
Two other non-parliamentary parties, the Estonian Greens and the relatively newly-formed TULE party saw support levels of 4 percent and 1 percent respectively, a slight fall for the Greens.
Since the threshold for obtaining Riiigikogu (or local or European) seats under Estonia's modified d'Hondt system of proportional representation stands at 5 percent, if the current Kantar Emor survey were representative of an election held right now, the results would translate into seats for Reform, Center, Eesti 200, EKRE, Isamaa and SDE, one more party than currently represented in parliament.
Kantar Emor says it surveyed 1,219 Estonian citizens aged 18-84 online, over the period January 14-19.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte