Ratings: Reform, SDE edging towards two MEP seats each, Isamaa close behind

While the Social Democrats (SDE) have significantly lost support compared with the first half of May, that party, along with the Reform Party, still appears to be on track to secure two mandates at this week's European Parliament election, according to one survey.
Overall, surveys are suggesting a tendency towards conservatism from voters at the European Parliament elections – a type of election where candidates tend to take prominence over parties – and there may be little changed from the current lineup of seven MEPs, one exception may be a change in who represents Isamaa in Strasbourg.
Pollsters Kantar Emor conducted the survey a week before the European Parliament election day, Sunday, June 9.
Advance voting opened on Monday, June 3.
In the mean-time, Kantar Emor says, the impact of campaigning has served to level the playing field among the various parties, closing up the gaps between the four most-supported parties.
ERR commissioned Kantar Emor to conduct the poll, which it did starting May 27 and ending June 2.
The Reform Party received the most support in the poll's results, albeit by a slim margin.
In the final phase of their extensive campaigning, the Reform Party's nine candidates were backed by 18.9 percent of respondents.
For comparison, in Kantar's May 6-15 survey, Reform polled at 17.2 percent.
Kantar finds that over half of the Reform Party's support derives from their lead candidate, sitting MEP and former foreign minister Urmas Paet, who was favored by 10.9 percent of respondents to the latest survey. If the Reform Party maintains this high a level of support on election day, that would guarantee them to retain two seats.
What is less clear according to Kantar is who will come in second on the Reform Party's list, as the difference between Minister of Defense Hanno Pevkur (2.3 percent) and MP and Riigikogu Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Marko Mihkelson (2.1 percent) is negligible. Former e-Estonia chief and son of former President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Luukas Kristjan Ilves, comes next, polling at 1.3 percent.
SDE meanwhile now falls just short of Reform, having topped all the previous, recent surveys, though the difference lies within the margin of error.
In the latest Kantar survey, SDE's support was 18.6 percent, down from 23.6 percent in the equivalent survey held in the first half of last month.
SDE still seems on course for two MEP seats, however.
Sitting MEP and former diplomat Marina Kaljurand is almost certain to secure one of the mandates, being the most popular candidate across all parties, with 12.4 percent support, though this is down from the 16 percent she enjoyed in the first half of May.
Assuming SDE were to win two mandates, the main contender for the second seat is, once again, former defense minister and incumbent MEP Sven Mikser, even though he only polled at 2.3 percent support in the latest survey.
Three parties are likely competing for five seats – ie. two each, with the third party getting just the one seat (on the assumption that the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) and the Center Party get one seat each, while Eesti 200 and Parempoolsed come away empty handed from next Sunday's election).
The third party, the one currently most likely to be left out in the cold in getting just one rather than two seats, is Isamaa.
While that party has enjoyed a long period in clover since the election of Urmas Reinsalu as party leader nearly a year ago, and has also in recent weeks seen a surge in support according to Kantar – from 14 percent in the early May survey to 16.4 percent in the late May survey – Isamaa would still only get one mandate, though the gap between it and SDE and the Reform Party has narrowed.
Part of the issue is that while Reform (Paet), SDE (Kaljurand) and also EKRE (in sitting MEP Jaak Madison) each have a clear front-runner candidate who brings in the bulk of the votes, Isamaa's support is distributed more thinly across three major candidates: These are current MEP and former defense chief Riho Terras, party chair Reinsalu, and former prime minister Jüri Ratas, who joined Isamaa earlier on this year.
The latest Kantar Emor poll takes up where the last one left off in finding that Ratas, rounding off the ordered list of nine, is ahead of Terras in support.
Most parties this time around have run a big hitter at the end of the batting order, as well as opening batsman or woman, too.
In the latest Kantar Emor survey, Ratas, whose multi-faceted campaigning has been quite visible on social media and elsewhere and has even pressed the family dog into the election effort, picked up 6.2 percent in support, while Terras polled at 3.3 percent.
Between these two lies Reinsalu at 5.4 percent.
In short, if Isamaa were to secure just one mandate, it is more likely that Ratas, prime minister 2016-2021 and Center Party leader until just last year, would represent Isamaa in Europe.
EKRE is not far behind Isamaa, and has also managed to increase its support.
In the latest poll, they took 15.2 percent support (compared with 13.6 percent in early May) – enough to grant them one mandate.
Two-thirds of EKRE's total support goes to Jaak Madison, whom 10.1 percent of respondents pledged to support, making him the third most popular candidate after Kaljurand and Paet.
EKRE chair and top-of-the-list candidate Martin Helme polled at 3.7 percent. Other EKRE candidates lag significantly behind the top two in terms of support.
The Center Party garnered 11.8 percent support in the latest Kantar Emor survey, which would give them one mandate as things stand
Party chair and former Tallinn mayor Mihhail Kõlvart, would then get the mandate, given his rating of 5.8 percent, a rating which makes him the fifth most-support candidate across all respondents plus the most popular among non-ethnic Estonian voters (25.7 percent in this respondent group, which in practice consists overwhelmingly of Russian-speaking voters).
Current MEP Jana, formerly Yana, Toom, polled at 3.2 percent support in the survey (but at 14.2 percent among non-ethnic Estonian voters), narrowly ahead of the sole candidate from the pro-Kremlin Koos party, Aivo Peterson, who pciked up 3.1 percent support (and 14.5 percent among non-ethnic Estonian voters).
In effect, Peterson is "stealing" votes from Toom and Center, and keeping Center under pressure right to election night, raising the specter of them not winning a seat at all.
Another factor which has hampered Center at the polls at least as far back as 2019 is a low turnout in their former heartland of Ida-Viru County.
The prospects for the remaining parties are largely theoretical, Kantar Emor finds. Parempoolsed, founded in 2022 and contesting its second-ever election, received 5.8 percent support in the current survey, down from the 7.2 percent it saw in early May and similar to support levels seen in March and April.
The support they do have is thanks mainly to two candidates: Party leader, co-founder and former prosecutor Lavly Perling, and Rainer Saks, a security expert who has often appeared in the media providing comment on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Perling polled at 2.7 percent, Saks at 2.1 percent, in the latest ERR-ordered Kantar poll.
As for Eesti 200, which has 14 Riigikogu seats, its support has continued to fall, and all nine candidates combined polled at just 3.6 percent, according to the latest Kantar poll.
The top individual candidate is co-founder and former leader Kristina Kallas, at 1 percent.
The Greens polled at 0.7 percent, most of which derives from party leader Evelyn Sepp (0.6 percent).
This time around there are only a handful of independent candidates running; Tanel Talve (0.7 percent) is the most-supported of these, according to Kantar Emor.
The comprehensive table below lists all 78 candidates. (Key: Support (Toetus), party (Erakond, where Keskerakond = the Center Party and Rohelised = the Greens) and support trend for the preceding three months (Kolme kuu trend) in the case of those registered as of the end of April.)
Kantar Emor conducted the survey for ERR online and over-the-phone, interviewing 1,489 eligible voters who reported that they intend to vote, over the time-frame May 27 to June 2.
Respondents were presented with all candidates registered at that point in time, and chose only their top preference (Estonia uses the d'Hondt system of proportional representation, meaning voters only pick one candidate, as opposed to the other system used in some EU nations, namely the single transferable vote system).
Kantar Emor claims a maximum possible margin of error of ±2.3 percent.
All EU citizens permanently resident in Estonia are eligible to vote at European elections.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte, Urmet Kook