Party ratings: Reform support falls as EKRE's rises

Support for the coalition Reform Party has continued to ebb, while that for the opposition Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) has been rising, according to a recent survey.
The poll, conducted on a weekly basis by market researchers Norstat on behalf of conservative think-tank the Institute for Societal Studies (MTÜ Ühiskonnauuringute Instituut), found 48.4 percent of respondents backing one of the three coalition partners, Reform, Isamaa or the Social Democrats, while 38.8 percent pledged their support for either of the two opposition parties, Center, and EKRE (the remainder would have included those who picked non-parliamentary parties).
By party, Reform picked up 32.5 percent of support, Norstat said, EKRE 22.8 percent and Center 16 percent.
Reform's support was one percentage point lower than a week ago, and two percentage points lower than a fortnight ago.
EKRE's conversely rose by one percentage point in the past week, and 9.7 percentage points separates the party from Reform, which is still most-supported party, according to Norstat.
Center's support is at its lowest since Norstat started compiling its surveys in their current form, in early 2019.
Reform, EKRE and Center are followed by Eesti 200, a non-parliamentary party, on 9.3 percent, Isamaa on 8.1 percent and SDE on 7.8 percent.
These three parties have been playing support musical chairs somewhat in recent weeks – Eesti 200's decline in support since early on in the year seems to have arrested, Norstat says; SDE is now fractionally behind Isamaa in the ratings after a boost in support last month, thought to be thanks to interior minister Lauri Läänemets (SDE) perceived handling of the Narva tank monument episode.
A minimum of 5 percent of the vote is required to obtain seats in any given constituency, under Estonia's system of proportional representation, meaning all the parties mentioned above received support levels that would translate into seats.
The Estonian Greens (Eestimaa Rohelised) polled at 1.7 percent this week, Norstat says.
The chart below represents the relative support ratings of Estonia's main political parties since early 2019 (Key: Green = Center, Black = EKRE, Yellow = Reform, Blue = Isamaa, Red = SDE, Light-green = Estonian Greens, Light-blue = Eesti 200).
Norstat aggregates its weekly results over a four-week period; the latest results are aggregated over the period August 9 to September 5, and just over 4,000 Estonian citizens of voting age were polled.
Norstat claims an error margin in proportion to a party's representative size, so, for instance, Reform at 32.5 percent support has results with a claimed error margin of +/- 1.45 percent, compared with +/1 0.83 for SDE, with 7.8 support.
The next elections are to the Riigikogu, on March 5 2023.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte