Ratings: Isamaa support dropped over the past week
Support for the opposition Isamaa fell 1.3 percentage points to 27.1 percent, though it remains the most-supported party in Estonia, according to a recent survey, while the Reform Party's has rallied a little since a slump late last year.
The Center Party (20.5 percent) and the Social Democrats (SDE, at 14.2 percent), both also in opposition, were in second and third place, according to the poll, conducted by Norstat on behalf of think tank the Institute of Social Studies.
In fourth place and only 0.4 percentage points behind SDE lay the Reform Party, the prime minister's party (13.8 percent), followed by the opposition Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) with 12.7 percent and the unrepresented Parempoolsed on 6.6 percent.
Eesti 200, the second coalition government party, fell below the 2-percent threshold to be eligible for state support as well as the 5-percent benchmark to win seats in any given electoral district.
Reform's support remained unchanged on the week but is 2.6 percentage points higher than it was at the end of 2025. Similarly, a decline in support for EKRE seems to have come to a halt, based on the Norstat poll.
The two coalition parties together polled at 15.6 percent compared with 74.5 percent for the four opposition parties combined.
Commenting on the results, Associate Professor Martin Mölder from the University of Tarty's Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies at the University of Tartu told Postimees that the drop in Isamaa's support is due to a weekly result that is lower than usual, standing at 23.5 percent – Norstat compiles its polls on a weekly basis but aggregates the results over the preceding four weeks, so a fall in one week could translate to a fall over the longer period too.
This may also be a fluctuation for Isamaa, he noted.
"Over the past couple of years, Isamaa's weekly support rating has on a few earlier occasions fallen to a comparable level, most recently in spring 2025, but so far these have been temporary fluctuations in statistically less reliable weekly results. Isamaa's four-week average support has been very consistent," Mölder said.
The latest Norstat poll covers the period December 15 to January 18, during which a total of 4,003 voting-age Estonian citizens were surveyed.
If taking the past week's results alone (sample of 1,000) Isamaa polled at 23.5 percent, as noted lower than usual, while Center (21.2 percent) and SDE (15.4 percent) polled a little better.
EKRE at 14.9 percent and the week, and the Reform Party just behind at 14.3 percent too both had a better past week than past four weeks, while the results for Parempoolsed and Eesti 200 were much the same.
Norstat polls Estonian citizens aged 18 and over, using a combined method — telephone interviews and online surveys, with telephone respondents making up the majority.
Norstat says it weights samples to correspond to the proportional distribution of citizens eligible to vote based on key sociodemographic characteristics.
The next direct elections in Estonia are in March 2027, to the Riigikogu.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte
