Party ratings: No major changes over past week

The decline in support for the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) has slowed up, just as the rise in support for Isamaa has plateaued too, according to a recent survey.
Beyond a turnaround in support for the Center Party, which has slowly started to rise again, little change in party ratings have been observed in the past week.
The poll, conducted by Norstat on behalf of the Institute of Social Studies (MTÜ Ühiskonnauuringute Instituut), found that 36.3 percent of respondents pledged their support for one of the three coalition parties – the Reform Party, the Social Democrats (SDE) or Eesti 200, compared with 55.8 percent who said they backed one of the three opposition parties: Isamaa, the Center Party, or the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE).
By individual party, 30.9 percent of respondents pledged their support for Isamaa, 16.7 percent for Reform and 16.3 percent for SDE.
These "top" three are followed by the Center Party (13 percent), EKRE (11.9 percent), the non-parliamentary Parempoolsed (4.7 percent) and Eesti 200 (3.3 percent).
This puts Parempoolsed just below the 5 percent threshold required to win seats at a Riigikogu election, and Eesti 200 significantly below that benchmark.
Party ratings did not change significantly over the past week, however, according to Norstat. Isamaa's rise in support has leveled-off, at 14.2 percentage points lead over Reform, which in turn is only a shade ahead of its coalition partner SDE (0.4 percentage point gap).
EKRE's fall in support has arrested as noted.
Support for Center is continuing to rise: up 2.6 percentage points compared with June's ratings and 3.2 percentage points higher compared than April's low point.
Both Center and EKRE have seen a wave of defections in recent months. In the latter case, a new breakaway party, the ERK, is being formed, but has not been incorporated yet so is not featured in the current Norstat survey.
The recent entry into office of the new Reform-SDE-Eesti 200 coalition, replacing the former administration which was made up of the same three parties, is also too recent to have had any effect on the ratings.
Based on the latest Norstat rating results, according to calculations by University of Tartu political scientist Martin Mölder, if a Riigikogu election were to be held today, Isamaa would get 37 seats, Reform 19 seats, SDE 18, Center 14 seats and EKRE 13 seats.
This compares with the current tallies of 11 for Isamaa, 38 for Reform, 14 for SDE, six for Center and 11 for EKRE (plus Eesti 200 currently has 13 seats, and the balance at the 101-seat parliament is made up by independent MPs).
Norstat conducts its polls on a weekly basis and aggregates them over the preceding four weeks.
The latest results reflect the survey period June 17 to July 22, when a total of 4,002 Estonian citizens of voting age (18+ at Riigikogu elections) were polled.
The next direct elections in Estonia are to local government, in October 2025.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte