Norstat: Support for SDE on a downward trend

After a rally in support buoyed by the acquisition of a number of high-profile former Center Party members, support for the coalition Social Democratic Party (SDE) has been on somewhat of a downward trend more recently, according to pollsters Norstat.
Norstat says that SDE's rating has falling by 3.2 percentage points in recent weeks, while that for the other political parties has neither risen nor fallen significantly.
The survey, conducted by Norstat on a weekly basis on behalf of the Institute of Societal Studies (MTÜ Ühiskonnauuringute Instituut), finds that a total of 59.6 percent of respondents support one of the three opposition parties, Isamaa, the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) or the Center Party, while 36.3 percent pledged their support for one of the coalition partners: The Reform Party, SDE or Eesti 200 ("don't knows" made up the balance).
Over the past week, Norstat said, support for most political parties did not change significantly. The most-supported party remains Isamaa, whose support remains at its highest level since the start of 2019, when Norstat began compiling its surveys in their current format. EKRE lies 11 percentage points behind Isamaa, but ahead of the Reform Party, the prime minister's party, by one percentage point, Norstat says.
By party, Norstat's latest results find 29.6 percent of citizens of voting age back Isamaa, compared with 18.6 percent for EKRE and 17.6 percent for Reform.
These "top" three are followed by SDE at 13.8 percent of support according to Norstat, the Center Party (11.4 percent support) and Eesti 200 (4.9 percent).
As noted SDE's support has fallen by over three percentage points over the past three weeks.
Support for Eesti 200 is also a fraction below the threshold required to obtain seats under Estonia's d'Hondt system of proportional representation, at any of the country's three direct elections – local, Riigikogu and European Parliament.
Norstat conducts its polls on a weekly basis, aggregating the results over a four-week period.
The latest survey covers the period February 5 to March 4, during which time 4,001 Estonian citizens of voting age (18 plus at Riigikogu elections) were quizzed, both online and over-the-phone and from a sample weighted to various socio-economic indicators.
Since there can be variations between the four-week aggregate results and the past single week alone, Norstat also reveals that in the latter case, support for Isamaad stood at 29.3 percent, for EKRE at 19.8 percent, and for the Reform Party at 14.9 percent.
The figure for SDE was 13 percent over the past week alone, while Center was just behind at 12.8 percent, and Eesti 200 at 5.8 percent, above the electoral threshold in this case.
Norstat claims a margin of error in direct proportion to a party's size by support. Thus, while the claimed error margin is +/-1.67 percent in the case of Isamaa, for Eesti 200, the figure is +/-0.79 percent
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Editor: Andrew Whyte, Aleksander Krjukov