Party ratings: No major change in party support over past week

No major change on week has been found in support for Estonia's main political parties, according to a recent survey, as Reform remains most popular, followed by the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE).
The three coalition parties together: The Reform Party, Isamaa and the Social Democrats (SDE), between them polled at 40.3 percent, according to the research, conducted by pollsters Norstat on behalf of the Institute for Societal Studies (MTÜ Ühiskonnauuringute Instituut).
EKRE and the Center Party, the two opposition parties, picked up 40.3 percent of support.
By party, Reform polled at 32.8 percent, EKRE at 25 percent – both figures virtually unchanged from the previous week (33 percent and 24.8 percent respectively).
Center saw a slight drop to 15.5 percent (from 16.2 percent the preceding week).
Non-parliamentary party Eesti 200 polled at 9.7 percent (9.5 percent the week before), Isamaa at 6.9 percent (down from 7.4 percent) and SDE at 6.6 percent (compared with 6.2 percent the previous week).
The Estonian Greens were rated at 1.6 percent; Parempoolsed, a newcomer to the political scene, at 0.8 percent.
Under Estonia's modified d'Hondt system of proportional representation, a minimum of 5 percent of the vote is required to win seats in a given constituency.
Commenting on the latest Norstat results, Martin Mölder, researcher at the University of Tartu's Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, said the overall picture reveals significant differences in the levels of support for Reform, EKRE, Center and Eesti 200, with their positions for the meantime relatively static and secure.
Were the Riigikogu elections to take place today, Mölder calculated 37 seats for Reform (up from its current tally of 34), 27 to EKRE (up from 19), Center on 16 seats (down from 23) and Eesti 200 on nine seats – the party has yet to win any Riigikogu seats, having been formed a few months before the last general election in 2019.
Isamaa and SDE would get half-a-dozen seats each, under this reckoning. The parties currently have 12 and 10 seats respectively.
The latest survey polled just over 4,000 Estonian citizens of voting age and is aggregated over the period November 22 to December 19.
The Riigikogu elections take place on March 5, 2023.
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), while the two tables below that show the support ratings in recent weeks, by four-week aggregate, and on a weekly basis (Rohelised = Greens, Keskerakond = Center, Muu = other).
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Editor: Andrew Whyte