Ratings: Eesti 200 support falls to new low

While there have been no big changes at the top of the ratings of Estonia's major political parties in the first couple of weeks of 2025, support for the coalition Eesti 200 party has dropped once again to an all-time low, from the previous low point last week, according to a recent poll.
The latest weekly survey conducted by Norstat Eesti AS in cooperation with conservative think tank the Institute for Societal Studies found that 27.4 percent of eligible voters back opposition party Isamaa.
A total of 17.9 percent of respondents said they support the coalition Reform Party, followed by 16.1 percent for the opposition Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE).
The opposition Center Party is not far behind EKRE at 14.5 percent according to the latest Norstat poll, while the coalition Social Democratic Party (SDE) lies in fifth place at 12.9 percent.
Eesti 200, as noted, has the lowest support of the six Riigikogu parties at just 2.7 percent, compared with 2.9 percent a week earlier – itself already a historic low for the party, founded in 2018. Education Minister Kristina Kallas last year returned for a second stint as party chair. Her two terms bookend the leadership of Lauri Hussar, Riigikogu speaker, and Margus Tsahkna, foreign minister.
Since entering office with Reform and SDE in summer 2023, the party has been rocked by more than one scandal, most notably concerning an MP who ran on a platform highlighting donation efforts to Ukraine, whose funds subsequently turned out to have been embezzled.
Isamaa has long been the most-supported party in Estonia according to Norstat and other pollsters; its current rating has remained relatively stable since the start of December.
Reform's support, meanwhile, has fallen by 2.6 percentage points over a period of a little over a month.
EKRE, on the other hand, has seen a surge in its rating, of 3.4 percentage points, over the same period.
A total of 33.5 percent of respondents pledged their support for the three coalition parties, while 58 percent did so for the three opposition parties.
Norstat compiles its surveys on a weekly basis and aggregates the results over the preceding four weeks; the latest survey period covers the turn of the year – December 9 to January 12, and a little over 4,000 Estonian citizens of Riigikogu voting age (18 and over) were quizzed, both online and over the phone.
Norstat says it weights its sample to various socio-economic indicators to make it representative of Estonian society; the survey excludes unpledged respondents.
Norstat claims an error margin in direct proportion to the size of a party by support; so, results for Isamaa, as the most-supported party, are with a margin of error of +/-1.75 percent compared with +/-0.64 percent for Eesti 200 as the least-supported.
The next elections are to the 79 local governments in Estonia, in October this year.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte, Mait Ots