Meanwhile, Isamaa was supported by 28.6 percent of respondents to the survey, the Center Party by 17.9 percent, and the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) just behind at a 17.3 percent rating in the latest Norstat poll.

Isamaa's rating has not changed significantly in recent weeks. Over the past week, Center and EKRE switched places, though their ratings are practically neck-and-neck.

In fourth place are the Social Democrats (SDE) at 13 percent, followed by Reform on 11 percent as noted. The non-parliamentary Parempoolsed party is next at 6 percent according to Norstat, one percentage point above the threshold required to win seats at an election, while Reform's coalition partner Eesti 200 lies below that threshold at 3.4 percent support.

SDE's rating has risen by 2.1 percentage points over the last three weeks. Reform's, as noted, dropped by another 1.2 percentage points over the same time-frame and has declined by a total of 6.2 percentage points since mid-June.

Reform's support remains at an all-time low since Norstat started compiling its weekly surveys at the start of 2019.

A total of 14.4 percent of respondents support the two coalition parties, Reform and Eesti 200, combined, while 76.8 percent supported one of the four Riigikogu opposition parties. Again, this is an all-time low level of support for the coalition.

Political scientist: Reform support likely bottomed out

Martin Mölder, associate professor at the University of Tartu's Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, told daily Postimees that while the decline of Reform's support stands out in the ratings, this has likely bottomed out.

"The past three weekly results have steadily hovered just above 10 percent, so therefore it seems that this is generally the level where the party has at least temporarily settled," Mölder noted, adding that if the same pattern repeats, next week will not bring any significant further decline in support.

"Together with Eesti 200, whose support has also been in a critical state for some time now (currently at 3.4 percent), this means that the government is being led by parties whose combined rating is an exceptionally low 14.4 percent — by both Estonian and global standards," Mölder added.

Norstat compiles its surveys on a weekly basis and aggregates the results over the preceding four weeks. The latest survey covers the period June 30 to July 28, when just over 4,000 Estonian citizens of voting age were questioned.

Respondents who expressed no preference are excluded from the above results.

Norstat claims a margin of error in direct proportion to a party's size by support, so for instance, the margin of error for Isamaa as the most supported party is a claimed +/-1.74 percent compared with +/-0.7 percent for Eesti 200 as the least supported party.

The next elections are in October, to all 79 local municipalities.

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