Party ratings: Reform pulls further ahead of EKRE
The Reform Party's support lead over the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) has continued to widen, according to a recent survey.
The poll, conducted on a weekly basis by Norstat, on behalf of conservative thinktank the Institute for Societal Studies (MTÜ Ühiskonnauuringute Instituut), found that a total of 47.2 percent of respondents picked one of the three coalition parties – Reform, the Social Democrats (SDE) or Isamaa – while 41 percent pledged their support to one of the two opposition parties: Center and EKRE.
Those supporting one of the three non-parliamentary parties, Eesti 200, the Estonian Greens or Parempoolsed, would have made up the difference, along with the "don't knows".
The Norstat survey results, published Tuesday evening, found that Reform polled at 35.5 percent, followed by EKRE on 24.4 percent, the Center Party on 16.6 percent, Eesti 200 on 9.1 percent, Isamaa (7.7 percent) and SDE (6.0 percent).
The Green Party polled at 1.2 percent; Parempoolsed 0.8 percent.
A minimum of 5 percent of the vote is required to gain seats in a given constituency, under Estonia's d'Hondt system of proportional representation, used in Riigikogu, local and European elections.
Reform's support has risen since the previous week, according to Norstat, when it stood at 32.7 percent. Center's support, too, has increased slightly, from 16 percent last week, while EKRE's support has continued a trend for a fall, from 27.4 percent at the end of October, to 25.5 percent last week, to the latest figure.
The graph below shows the relative support of Estonia's major political parties since early 2019, when Norstat started conducting its surveys in their current guise (Key: Yellow = Reform, green = Center, black = EKRE, royal blue = Isamaa, red = SDE, light blue = Eesti 200, light green = Estonian Greens).
Norstat conducts its polls on a weekly basis and aggregates the results over a four-week period. The latest results cover the period November 1 to November 28.
Just over 4,000 Estonian citizens of voting age were questioned.
The next election is to the Riigikogu, on March 5, 2023.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte