Party ratings: EKRE polls highest support level ever

Support for the opposition Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) has reached its highest-ever level, according to one recent poll, narrowing the gap between it and the larger of the two coalition partners, Reform, whose support has dipped below the 30 percent mark for the first time this year.
The two coalition parties, Reform and Center, together polled higher at 48.7 percent than the three opposition parties, EKRE, Isamaa and the Social Democrats (SDE) combined, who polled at 35.1 percent, according to the results of the survey, conducted by pollsters Norstat on behalf of the NGO the Institute for Social Research (MTÜ Ühiskonnauuringute Instituut).
Norstat compiles its polls on a weekly basis and aggregates them over a period of four weeks, and is one of three firms which regularly compile party support surveys in Estonia – the other two being Kantar Emor and Turu-uuringute.
Reform's support fell by 1.5 percentage points on the previous week, to 29.2 percent, and for the first time this year, its level dipped below the 30 percent-mark, Norstat says.
Meanwhile EKRE, which was in office at the beginning of the year with Center and Isamaa, while Reform was in opposition, saw its support rise by almost the same degree – 1.1 percentage points, to 21.7 percent, Norstat reports, adding a gap of 7.5 percentage points between the two parties is the slimmest it has been to date.
Center's support was relatively unchanged at 19.5 percent, while non-parliamentary party Eesti 200's support was slightly down at 12.5 percent.
SDE polled 7.8 percent and Isamaa, which is holding internal elections to the post of party chair soon, picked up 5.6 percent.
Norstat says it polled just over 4,000 Estonian citizens of voting age (i.e. 18 or over) between May 19 and June 14, via the phone and online.
The firm says that its error margin varies, rising in line with the proportion of support for the party in question – so Reform's error margin is 1.41 percent, for instance, compared with Isamaa's at 0.71 percent.
The next elections are to the local municipalities, on October 17.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte