Large Estonian parties lose popularity in August

Photo: Raigo Pajula

The four Estonian parliamentary parties combined had 7 percent less supporters in August than in July, whereas the ratings of two unrepresented parties climbed nearer to the 5 percent parliamentary threshold, it appears from a nationwide survey by TNS Emor for the public broadcaster ERR.

Just like in July, the most popular parties were the opposition Center Party and Social Democratic Party (SDE) that would get 26 percent and 25 percent of the vote respectively if elections were held tomorrow. Center's rating dropped by two percentage points and SDE's by one percentage point from July.

Of the ruling coalition parties Reform was the stronger one as usual with a rating of 20 percent, 4 percentage points lower then in July, while Pro Patria and Res Publica Union (IRL) was second at 14 percent, unchanged from a month ago.

Greens, the non-parliamentary party that received a bankruptcy warning from the committee for supervision over party finances earlier this week, were in fifth position with a rating of 5 percent and the Conservative People's Party sixth with 4 percent. The Independence Party trailed in seventh place with 2 percent.

"This time the smaller parties had more credit from citizens, which is somewhat of a seemingly momentary alternative to the much-criticized big parties," Aivar Voog, expert at Emor, said in a commentary added to the figures..  

The two opposition parties in parliament had a rating of 51 percent combined while parties of the governing coalition had 34 percent.  

The survey was conducted by Emor for ERR by interviewing 869 voting-age citizens in their homes. To make the outcome comparable with general elections the Emor figures only represent answers by respondents who have a party preference. Respondents who did not favor any party made up 41 percent in the August poll, 5 percentage points less than in July.

In a similar survey in July, Center was backed by 28 percent, SDE by 26 percent, Reform by 24 percent and IRL by 14 percent.

In August 2012 the rating of the ruling Reform Party hit an all-time high of 39 percent, almost double the rating this August. SDE and Center were tied at 20 percent and IRL in fourth place with 13 percent.