The latest weekly ratings, conducted by Norstat on behalf of the Institute for Societal Studies, found that support for Center stood at 17.8 percent compared with 17.4 percent for Reform. However, Reform Party Secretary General Timo Suslov has called the latest Norstat survey results misleading.

Isamaa remains the most supported party with 26.4 percent support this week according to Norstat, a figure practically unchanged from the previous week's rating of 26.6 percent, meaning a four-week decline in support for Isamaa has halted.

Center's support rose by a percentage point in one week, Reform's fell by slightly more (1.3 percentage points), meaning as noted they swapped places in the ratings, by a margin of just 0.4 percentage points.

Norstat conducts its polls on a weekly basis and aggregates the preceding four weeks' results. However, Martin Mölder, associate professor at the University of Tartu's Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, told Postimees that when taking Reform's support for the past week alone, the party rated at just 12 percent, the lowest level ever recorded by Norstat in its surveys – which started in early 2019.

The opposition Conservative People's Party of Estonia was in fourth place at 16.5 percent according to Norstat, the Social Democrats (SDE), also in opposition, were next at 10.4 percent, followed by the non-parliamentary Parempoolsed at 5.0 percent, and the coalition Eesti 200 party at 3.6 percent.

Five percent of the vote in any electoral district is required to win seats under Estonia's d'Hondt system of proportional representation, meaning Parempoolsed was right on this threshold in the latest Norstat poll, while Eesti 200's rating fell below it, as it has done for several months.

The Estonian Greens (Rohelised) picked up 1.1 percent support, the KOOS party 0.7 percent, and all remaining parties combined rated at 1.1 percent.

Mölder also translated the above ratings into seats won if a Riigikogu election were held with the same results: In this case, Isamaa would get 32 seats (four times its current tally of eight seats), Center and Reform would get 20 seats each (compared with seven and 37 respectively), EKRE 18 (currently 10), and SDE 11 seats (a little higher than its current nine).

The two coalition parties were supported by a total of 21 percent of respondents, while the four opposition parties at the Riigikogu were supported by 71.1 percent of respondents to the Norstat poll.

Norstat quizzed at least 4,000 respondents age 18 and over from a sample weighted to various socio-economic characteristics over the past four weeks (March 31 to April 28 inclusive), and excluded respondents who had no party preference.

Norstat claims a margin of error in direct proportion to the size of a party by support, so for instance with Isamaa as the most supported party, the margin of error is +/-1.69 percent, compared with +/-0.72 percent for Eesti 200 as the least supported.

Reform Party secretary general: Survey misleads the public

Reform Party Secretary General Timo Suslov said the latest Norstat rating misleads the public.

Suslov said that while fluctuations in ratings and sampling errors are normal, the latest anomalies are rather unusual and suggest an issue with how the surveys are conducted, including a lack of political independence.

"In our view, the Institute for Societal Studies has never been politically independent. It is more widely known as an NGO which, with funding from Parvel Pruunsild among other things, provides polling favorable to Isamaa — when the institute's data is presented publicly, this flaw must be pointed out," Suslov said.

In polls commissioned by Delfi and conducted by Turu-Uuringute AS, Reform's support has run at between 17–19 percent in the past two months, while in the ERR-commissioned Kantar Emor polls, the level has been between 18–17 percent, Suslov noted. Meanwhile, Isamaa's support has shown a significant decline recently.

"In surveys commissioned by the Institute for Societal Studies, Reform Party support over the past six weeks has been — 18.1 percent, 17.5 percent, 20 percent, 19.4 percent, 17.9 percent during the school holiday week before Good Friday, and suddenly reported as 12 percent for the past week. The public mainly sees a four-week average rating. If there is such a major fluctuation in the sample or calculations in one week, it conveniently affects the entire month, i.e., the four-week average. This time, that is what has happened," Suslov continued.

The next elections are to the 79 municipalities, in October this year.

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