Party Ratings: Reform overtakes EKRE, Eesti 200 slump continues
The coalition Reform Party has reclaimed the ratings lead over the opposition Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE), according to a recent survey. Meanwhile, Eesti 200 of the coalition continues to see its rating fall.
The three opposition parties together: EKRE, the Center Party and Isamaa, polled higher than the coalition partners in the survey, conducted by Norstat on behalf of conservative think-tank the Institute of Societal Studies (MTÜ Ühishonnauuringute Instituut).
Whereas the opposition parties polled at 50.6 percent combined, the three coalition parties, Reform, Eesti 200 and the Social Democrats, together picked up 44.1 percent of support, according to Norstat.
By party, 25.6 percent of respondents supported Reform, and 24.5 percent pledged for EKRE.
Support for the prime minister's party, Reform, has been on the decline since the March 5 election, recently hovering around the 24 percent-mark, but over the past week, the party's support has started to rise, by 1.3 percentage points.
EKRE's rating has moved in the opposite direction. It has been rising steadily in recent months, reaching 25.4 percent a week ago, but over the past week this has fallen by 0.9 percentage points. The party looks set to reelect Martin Helme as leader, with Peeter Ernits a nominal challenger.
Eesti 200's support has fallen from 16 percent in early April, to 9.4 percent this week, according to Norstat. The party has been beset with controversy involving two of its MPs, one of whom stepped down over embezzlement allegations relating to an NGO set up to help Ukraine.
The Center Party are thus now ahead of Eesti 200, though in the past week, Center's support has dropped too, by 0.9 percentage points, to 17.5 percent.
SDE and Isamaa have both enjoyed ratings rises.
SDE went from 8.6 percent last week, to 9.1 percent this week.
Isamaa's support is now at the level SDE's was a week ago, according to Norstat, ie. 8.6 percent, up from 7.7 percent.
The non-parliamentary Parempoolsed party polled at a relatively stable 2.2 percent this week, while the Greens, too saw little change in support, at 1.8 percent according to Norstat.
The line graph below shows the relative changes in party support levels since Norstat started compiling its surveys in their current format. (Key: Yellow = Reform, green = Center, black = EKRE, royal blue = Isamaa, red = SDE, light blue = Eesti 200, light green = Estonian Greens, orange = Parempoolsed.)
The two tables show recent weeks' results for the aggregated four weeks, followed by the weekly results.
Norstat conducts its poll on a weekly basis and aggregates the results over the preceding four weeks.
The results above cover the period May 8 to June 5; 4,000 Estonian citizens of voting age were quizzed over that time period.
Norstat claims an error margin in line with the size of a party's support, so for instance with EKRE, as one of the most-supported parties, the margin of error is +/- 1.62 percent, Norstat says, compared with +/-0.98 percent for Isamaa, one of the less-supported parties.
The next election in Estonia takes place a year from now, to the European Parliament.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte, Mait Ots