Ratings: Reform Party's support continues to fall

The coalition Reform Party's popularity has dropped to 12.2 percent when aggregated over four weeks, according to a recent survey.
The poll, conducted by Norstat on behalf of think tank the Institute for Societal Research, finds that based on the past week alone, Reform's rating was 10.1 percent.
The party's rating when aggregated has dropped by 1.8 percentage points in a week and has fallen by 5 percentage points since mid-June, and is at an all-time low since Norstat started conducting its surveys in their current form, in January 2019.
Three opposition parties picked up the most support this week according to Norstat: Isamaa was supported by 28.3 percent of respondents, the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) rated at 18.2 percent, while the Center Party's rating was close behind at 17.3 percent. These figures are largely unchanged on the preceding week.
Reform came next at 12.2 percent as noted, neck-and-neck with SDE, also at 12.2 percent. The non-parliamentary Parempoolsed party polled at 5.7 percent, above the 5-percent threshold required to win seats under Estonia's electoral system.
Reform's coalition partner Eesti 200 polled below that threshold at 3.2 percent.
The two coalition parties were supported by just 15.4 percent of respondents to Norstat's survey compared with 76 percent for the four opposition parties combined, again the lowest figure since Norstat started compiling its weekly ratings polls.
Once a month, the Institute for Societal Research quizzes respondents on their opinion on the performance of the government and prime minister. The latest results show 22 percent of respondents think the government is doing a "very good" or "quite good" job, compared with 71 percent who stated it is performing "quite poorly" or "very poorly."
Kristen Michal's (Reform) rating as prime minister was 62 percent disapproval compared with 18 percent who approve, according to Norstat.
The latest party support aggregate covered the period June 16 to July 21, with a total of 4,001 Estonian citizens of voting age surveyed during that time. Respondents without a party preference are excluded from the above figure, while Norstat claims a maximum margin of error in direct proportion to a party's size by support. So, Isamaa as most-supported party according to Norstat comes with a +/-1.72 percent margin of error for its results, compared with a +/-0.67 percent margin of error for Eesti 200 as least-supported party.
Norstat uses both over-the-phone interviews and online surveys, and says it weights its sample data according to key sociodemographic metrics.
The next elections are to local government, in October.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte