Ratings: Isamaa support continues to climb as coalition's dips further

Support for the opposition party Isamaa continues to rise, widening its lead over the Reform Party, which is in second place, while coalition support has dropped to its lowest level since 2019, according to a recent survey.
The research, conducted by pollsters Norstat on behalf of the conservative think tank the NGO Institute for Social Research, also found that one of the coalition parties, Eesti 200, has once again hit an all-time low in support.
Norstat's latest weekly poll shows that 9.8 percent of respondents support Isamaa, compared with 17.2 percent for the Reform Party, the prime minister's party, and 16 percent for the opposition Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE).
This means that while Isamaa's rating continues to rise, by 1.5 percentage points over the past week and by 3.4 percentage points compared to mid-December, support for the Reform Party continues to fall: by 3.3 percentage points since early December. EKRE's rating has remained largely stable.
In fourth place is the opposition Center Party, with 14.8 percent, according to Norstat, followed by the coalition Social Democratic Party (SDE) at 11.9 percent.
Eesti 200, a coalition party and the last of the six parties represented in the Riigikogu, polled at just 2.6 percent this week, according to Norstat. This places it well below the 5-percent threshold needed to win seats under Estonia's d'Hondt system of proportional representation, and less than a percentage point above the 2-percent threshold required to qualify for state support. The party's rating has been at its lowest since its founding in 2019 and has been consistently declining.
The coalition parties, in general, poll at 31.7 percent, in the wake of unpopular policies such as the new car tax and the perceived handling of the current economic situation, compared with 60.6 percent for the three opposition parties, who have the advantage of being in opposition.
In any case, the combined support for the coalition is at a six-year low.
Norstat conducts its polls on a weekly basis and aggregates the results over the preceding four weeks; the latest results cover the period from December 30 to January 26, during which time just over 4,000 Estonian citizens of voting age were surveyed.
Norstat says it weights its sample groups based on various socio-economic indicators, conducts its poll both online and over the phone, and claims a margin of error in direct proportion to the size of a party's support. For instance, Isamaa, as the most supported party, has results with a margin of error of +/-1.77 percent, compared to +/-0.62 percent for Eesti 200, the least supported party of the six sitting in the Riigikogu.
The next elections are for the 79 local municipalities in October this year.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte, Mait Ots