Going by the fairly stable ratings of Estonian political parties and the large share of voters without a party preference demonstrated by a fresh popularity poll, the rankings of parties could easily change, the Center Party says.
Estonian Center Party: rankings of parties could easily change
20th April 2013, 13:46
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"Support for the Center Party is stable and in coming months we'll have to be even more active and more vocal in explaining our positions. However, there's little difference between support figures of the top three parties and given the large proportion of voters who answered 'cannot say' the rankings could easily change," Center Party spokesman Taavi Pukk told BNS.
In the Center Party's view, stable support for the Reform Party is probably a sign of voters beginning to forget the scandals that racked the party last year. The low support of Pro Patria and Res Publica Union (IRL) can be attributed to the electorate's displeasure with the party's failure to keep the election promise to reduce housing costs. "Furthermore, the Reform Party has skilfully managed to distance itself from this topic," Pukk observed.
If parliamentary elections took place now 27 percent of respondents would vote for the Social Democratic Party (SDE), 25 percent for the Reform Party, 24 percent for the Center Party and 13 percent for IRL, ERR news reported on Friday citing a poll TNS Emor conducted for the public broadcaster in April.
Compared to the previous month, SDE and the Reform Party maintained their voters' support while both Center and IRL saw their rating weaken by two percentage points.
Overall support for the two opposition parties, SDE and Center, was 51 percent against the Reform-IRL coalition's 38 percent. The gap has not narrowed since last month.
TNS Emor interviewed 880 voting-age citizens from March 27 to April 17. The pollster presents the ratings on the basis of respondents who have a party preference, eliminating respondents who do not name any party. In April such respondents made up 40 percent of all the interviewees.