Party Ratings: Reform retains highest support levels
Reform remains the most popular party among voters in Estonia to mid-March, while support for its coalition partner Center has fallen since last month, according to pollsters Kantar Emor.
Reform, which has 34 Riigikogu seats, polled at 28 percent with Kantar Emor's respondents, a fall from 30 percent in February.
The party had picked up 27 percent in January, just ahead of entering office with Center.
Kantar Emor's survey is held monthly; a recent weekly poll by another research firm found the party's support to have leveled off, but not declined.
The opposition Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) was in second place in the Kantar Emor march survey at 19 percent, a slight fall from 20 percent in February. EKRE was in office in the last administration but left with the coalition's collapse in January. Norstat found EKRE support to have risen slightly over the same period.
Kantar Emor found that Center's support had risen, to 18 percent, from 17 percent the week before.
The company says support for Reform is highest among women in the 24-49 age bracket, while for EKRE, men in the 50-64 age group are its largest supporters.
Center is strongest in the over 65s, while non-parliamentary party Eesti 200 is most popular with younger voters, meaning those under 35. The latter party saw a rise in support from 15 to 16 percent of respondents, between February and March, according to Kantar Emor.
The other two opposition parties, the Social Democrats (SDE) and Isamaa – the latter was in office in the last administration, the former has been out-of-office at the national level since April 2019 – picked up 9 percent and 5 percent respectively in the March Kantar Emor results.
Kantar Emor also reported four percent support for the Green Party, just one percentage point behind the threshold needed to win Riigikogu seats (which the party has held in the past), and one percent of support for TULE, a relatively new party formed by a merger of the Free Party, which had several seats in the last Riigkogu composition, and Richess of Life.
Kantar Emor conducted its March survey solely online, between March 11 and 16, and interviewed 1,114 Estonian citizens of voting age, from 18-84.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte
