The market research, conducted by pollsters Norstat on behalf of conservative think-tank the Institute for Social Research (MTÜ Ühiskonnauuringute Instituut) , finds that since the end of May, the gap between Reform, which has 34 Riigkogu seats and is in office with Center, and EKRE – 19 seats – has fallen by five percentage points, to a less-than-six-percentage-points disparity, the lowest since early 2019.

Reform is now on 28.2 percent support, according to Norstat's latest weekly poll, with EKRE on 22.4 percent. The other coalition party, Center, remains in third place on 19.9 percent.

For Reform, the data suggests an earlier decline in support has flatlined.

The top three parties are followed in support levels by the non-parliamentary Eesti 200, Norstat says, which picked up 12.5 percent in the latest poll. The other two opposition parties, the Social Democrats (SDE) and Isamaa are next, on 7.9 percent and 5.4 percent respectively.

SDE has 10 seats and Isamaa 12.

Norstat conducts its poll on a weekly basis and aggregates the results over a four-week period. The latest survey covered the period July 1 to 7 and polled 4,000 Estonian citizens of voting age, both over the phone and in face-to-face interviews, with the focus groups weighted via various socio-economic indicators, Norstat says.

Norstat claims margins of error in direct proportion to the size of support for the party in question, meaning the margin of error for Reform, say, is larger, at +/-1.39 percent, than it is for Isamaa (+/- 0.7 percent) for instance.

The local government elections are on October 17.

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