Party ratings: Support for Reform continues to rise
Support for the coalition Reform Party is still rising, according to a recent poll, while support for the non-parliamentary Eesti 200 party, in many ways a party which appeals to the same demographic as Reform, has continued do fall, after a strong showing at the start of the year.
The latest weekly survey, conducted by pollsters Norstat on behalf of conservative think-tank the NGO Institute for Societal Studies (MTÜ Ühiskonnauuringute Instituut) found that the two coalition parties, Reform and the Center Party, picked up 50.9 percent of support, while the three opposition parties combined (Isamaa, the Social Democratic Party (SDE) and the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE)) polled at 33.4 percent.
Reform alone polled at 33.9 percent in the latest Norstat survey, while EKRE picked up 20.2 percent and Center 17 percent.
While these figures did not represent a major change on the previous week's results, the long-term trend for a rise in support for Reform and a widening of the gap between it and the second-placed party, EKRE, continues. The gap between Reform and EKRE is now 13.7 percentage points (compared with 12.6 percentage points a week earlier), while Center is now 3.2 percentage points behind EKRE.
The top three are followed by Eesti 200, founded in 2018 and currently with no Riigikogu seats – the party won local government seats at last October's elections – which has 12.6 percent of support. A week earlier, the party polled at 13 percent. Since the start of March Eesti 200 has lost 7.1 percentage points in support.
SDE pulled at 7.2 percent, and Isamaa picked up 5.7 percent – 0.7 percentage points above the threshold required to win seats in a given constituency, under Estonia's modified d'Hondt system of proportional representation
Support for the non-parliamentary Green Party ran at 1.9 percent in the latest poll.
Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine started three months ago, Reform and in particular its prime minister, Kaja Kallas, have seen a surge in popularity. Kallas has appeared in many of the major international publications, highlighting the scale of the atrocities committed in Ukraine and the importance of NATO to the region and to Europe and the wider world as a whole, among other aspects of the defense and security situation.
(Green - Center Party; black - EKRE; yellow - Reform Party; blue - Isamaa; red - SDE; light green - Estonian Greens; light blue - Eesti 200).
The latest Norstat survey results are aggregated, to cover the period April 26 to May 23; 4,001 Estonian citizens of voting age were polled.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte
