Party ratings: EKRE support level above 27 percent
Support for the opposition Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) has continued to rise in the past week, according to one recent survey, and the gap between it and the coalition Reform Party is now just 3.8 percentage points. At the same time, this trend shows signs of slowing.
The survey, conducted on a weekly basis by pollsters Norstat on behalf of conservative think-tank the Institute for Societal Studies ((MTÜ Ühiskonnauuringute Instituut), found that in total, 44.3 percent of respondents chose one of the three coalition parties – Reform, Isamaa or the Social Democrats (SDE) – while the figure supporting one of the two opposition parties, the Center Party or EKRE, was almost the same, at 42.8 percent, Norstat says (the remainder would have primarily been respondents who chose a non-parliamentary party).
By party, Reform picked up 31.2 percent of support and remains in first place by support, followed by EKRE on 27.4 percent and Center on 15.4 percent.
In fourth place is Eesti 200, currently not represented at the Riigikogu, on 9.2 percent, followed by Isamaa and SDE, who are neck-and-neck (6.6 percent and 6.5 percent respectively).
While support for Reform has been falling in recent weeks, according to Norstat, in the past week there was actually a small rise, of 0.6 percentage points, slightly higher than EKRE's support rise (0.5 percentage points).
EKRE have boosted their support by eight percentage points since July and have reached the highest support level since Norstat started conducting its polls in their current format, in early 2019.
Center's support has stabilized in recent weeks at the 15-16-percent mark.
The Estonian Greens picked up 1.4 percent of support in the Norstat poll, again unchanged on the previous week, while the newly formed Parempoolsed party saw a slight fall on last week, to 0.9 percent, Norstat says.
The graph below shows the relative changes in political party support levels in Estonia since early 2019 (Key: Yellow=Reform, green = Center, black = EKRE, light blue = Eesti 200, red = SDE, royal blue = Isamaa, light green = Estonian Greens).
The latest survey was aggregated over the period September 13 to October 10 and polled around 4,000 Estonian citizens of voting age.
The next elections are to the Riigikogu, in March 2023.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte
Source: Norstat
