Party ratings: Reform support starting to ebb again

EKRE and Reform local election campaign posters outside the Center Party's headquarters in Tallinn in September 2021.
EKRE and Reform local election campaign posters outside the Center Party's headquarters in Tallinn in September 2021. Source: Siim Lõvi /ERR

Reform remains most-supported of Estonia's major political parties, though the gap between it and the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) continues to narrow, according to a recent poll. Meanwhile, Eesti 200's support is at its highest since a year ago.

Reform's support has started to fall again after rising through December 2021, Norstat says.

The two coalition parties, Reform and Center, together polled at 45.2 percent, while the three opposition parties, Isamaa, the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE), Social Democratic Party (SDE), received 36.1 percent support from respondents, according to the research, conducted by pollsters Norstat on behalf of conservative think-tank Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (MTÜ Ühiskonnauuringute Instituut).

As to individual parties, Norstat's aggregated results drawn from the past four weeks placed Reform on 24.5 percent support, EKRE in second place on 22.4 percent and Center on 20.7 percent.

Support for Reform fell by 1.2 percentage points over the past week, Norstat says, while EKRE's rose by a larger figure, 1.8 percent, albeit over a two-week period.

Center's support has remained in the 20-21-percent range.

The top three are followed by the non-parliamentary Eesti 200 at 16 percent, as noted the party's highest since the start of 2021 and only slightly behind the rally the party experienced a year ago, when its rating was 16.5 percent according to Norstat.

Opposition parties SDE and Isamaa are virtually neck-and-neck on 6.9 percent and 6.8 percent respectively, Norstat says.

Norstat polled just over 4,000 Estonian citizens of voting age between December 14 and January 17 in its polling period, using both phone and online means of gathering responses, and weighted to various socio-demographic indicators, the company says.

Norstat claims a margin of error of +/- 1.33 percent for the most-supported party, Reform, while margins of error for other parties depend on the size of their support – for instance Isamaa's error margin is +/- 0.78 percent, Norstat says.

Reform has 34 Riigikogu seats, Center 25, EKRE 19, Isamaa 12 and SDE 11, at the 101-seat chamber.

The next general election is in March 2023.

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Editor: Andrew Whyte

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