Voog made his remarks speaking to ERR's Urmet Kook and Indrek Kiisler, as all three appeared on Thursday's election special, following publication of Kantar Emor's April ratings.

Isamaa, in opposition, remains the most supported of all political parties, but that lead has started to diminish, Kook noted, adding support for the Center Party, also in opposition, has been steadily rising in recent months,

Kook added that this latter phenomenon is largely thanks to Russian-speaking voters, traditionally Center's bedrock support, returning to the fold having drifted away somewhat.

Voog agreed and noted that Isamaa peaked at the end of 2024/start of 2025, a peak which has now passed while the party remains in opposition.

He said: "The support for any opposition party is often volatile. The rise was based on previous voter preferences being shaken up by something. Isamaa was an alternative for them. But once negative news about Isamaa comes out, it has an immediate effect."

That negative news would mostly involve a criminal investigation into alleged illicit donations by BigBank owner Parvel Pruunsild, a major Isamaa sponsor, and also an investigation by party financing watchdog the ERJK on whether Isamaa leader Urmas Reinsalu's "Varivalitsus" talk show, hosted by Postimees, constitutes an illicit donation too.

Kook asked Voog whether Isamaa's decline has occurred with specific demographics, or more broadly. Voog's answer was that, although Isamaa's core electorate includes more men, at the peak of their support, many women voters joined them.

"[But] now a gender gap has re-emerged. It can partly be assumed that women moved to support the Parempoolsed, as their support among women has increased," Voog went on, adding Isamaa's rating has also even fallen among men, many of whom have started supporting the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) instead.

According to Kiisler, Isamaa has not managed to focus just on one or two clear topics in recent months.

He said: "EKRE has taken up single issue [politics] – opposition to wind turbines. Isamaa's messages are too vague. Reinsalu does direct posts at the Reform Party, but he just criticizes them and doesn't offer concrete solutions. People do start to get tired of slogans. If the same things are repeated month after month but without results, people get fatigued."

Kook noted all three major research firms which regularly conduct party polls in Estonia show a fall for Isamaa (In addition to Kantar Emor, these are Turu-uuringute and Norstat; the latter does its research for conservative think tank the Institute for Societal Studies – ed.).

"Now we'll see whether the party draws any substantive conclusions from this or just keeps blaming the mirror, as the initial reactions have suggested," Kook continued.

He then returned to the Center Party and acknowledged that they have steadily been boosting their support, after a slump in 2023-2024, which involved a mass exodus of often high profile members.

"Life has handed the Center Party two favorable issues – voting rights for non-citizens and the Russian Church theme. The Center Party has clearly picked up on this, and that's where the growth has come from," Kook said, referring to efforts to decouple the Russian Orthodox Church in Estonia from the Moscow Patriarchate.

Center has regained 2019-levels of support, when it stood at around 70 percent, Voog noted.

Kook added that at the same time, the Social Democratic Party (SDE) has lost a large portion of its Russian-speaking supporters, and the party's rating among non-ethnic Estonian respondents is now only at 6 percent.

He said: "SDE are also in a difficult position among Estonian voters because while in previous governments they were partly in opposition, now being in full opposition they still carry the tag of a government party responsible for past decisions – and other opposition parties will surely keep reminding them of that."

Reform ejected SDE from office last month, but as noted by Kook the party had often served as a type of internal opposition when it was in office with Reform and Eesti 200 starting in summer 2023, or arguably even earlier in the preceding coalition with Reform and Isamaa, to summer 2022.

Kiisler pointed out another factor related to the Tallinn City Government, noting that the Center Party was pushed out of power there a year ago. "Now Center is enjoying the fruits of that. The current city administration has nothing to show to the average voter. And there haven't been any major or scandalous exits from the Center Party. The party is now demonstrating stability," he said.

SDE joined Center in a bipartite coalition from late 2021, then joined Reform, Isamaa and Eesti 200 at city level, ejecting Center from office in the capital a year ago.

When Center was in office in Tallinn, it had operated various media channels, some of which have been closed down – but this has had the effect of significantly reducing the visibility of city government activities whoever is in office, Voog pointed out.

Voog stressed that Center has solid support among Russian speakers in Tallinn now, and now the outcome depends on voter turnout at the local elections six months away. The party's members also show a high level of motivation, he added.

Kook noted that Center still has to contend with its million-euro debt, arising from an illicit donations ruling which went against them and which prevents them from running a large campaign.

Donations to the party have come only from its own members, not, for example, from businesspeople as has been the case with many other parties.

However, this is not the first time in recent years Center has had to appeal to the party rank and file for donations in the wake of a fine, meaning it may be accustomed to running a campaign under such conditions.

As for Reform, Kook said their rating remained largely unchanged between March and April, meaning the change in government last month brought no significant boost either for Reform or for Eesti 200 – the latter remains in the doldrums and below the 5 percent threshold required to win seats in an electoral district.

Voog said that if the positive green shoots of recovery in the economy begin to reach the general populace, then support for Reform, as the senior coalition party and as a business and free market-oriented party, may start to rise — but this could only happen at the end of this year or early next year, in other words after the local elections.

Kiisler added that in its public messaging, Reform is trying at all costs to instill optimism in people, which in turn is connected to their being in office. But this can often ring hollow when ordinary people are confronted with some of the price rises, including in food, which have been seen in Estonia.

One other party mentioned was the pro-Kremlin KOOS/Vmeste party. Voog said that while they may have a chance in some municipalities in Ida-Viru County, mainly towns with large Russian-speaking populations, this chance will not extend to the capital or anywhere else.

Also, the number of voters likely to support KOOS should in theory be smaller now, following an amendment to the Constitution, the first ever, which removed the right of Russian and Belarusian citizens residing in Estonia to vote in local elections. All third-party nationals, meaning non-EU citizens, lost this right with the same amendment, so it remains to be seen what, if any, effect this has at the upcoming elections.

Polling day is Sunday, October 19.

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