Majority of respondents to poll in favour of Kaja Kallas' resignation

Over two-thirds of respondents to a recent survey said that Kaja Kallas should step down as prime minister in the wake of controversy over her husband's links to a company which had been conducting business in Russia, notwithstanding the prime minister's own exhortations for Estonian firms, in general, to halt all business activity in or with Russia, following the invasion of Ukraine.

The survey was conducted on September 6 by pollsters Norstat on behalf of conservative think-tank the Institute for Societal Studies, ERR reports.

This was the third week that Norstat had posed the same question, ie. should the prime minister resign over the controversy relating to Stark Logistics, the company her husband had a stake in, given that it had been involved in transporting items manufactured by a related company to a third, also related firm, inside the Russian Federation.

The first week's survey, whose results were published on August 25, found 57 per cent in favour of a resignation, shortly after the story first broke.

A week later and after the premier had had time to respond to the criticisms, the figure had grown to 66 per cent, but between last week and this week, the proportion of respondents calling for Kallas to resign had only risen by one percentage point, to 67 per cent.

The question asked was: "Do you think Kaja Kallas should resign from the office of prime minister?"

As noted, 67 per cent answered either "Preferably yes," or simply "Yes," compared with 27 per cent who responded "No" or "Preferably not" (the remaining 6 per cent answered "Can't say."

As might be expected, the responses varied widely when broken down along party preference lines, although even 19 per cent of supporters of Kallas' own party, Reform, found that she should resign over the scandal.

Nearly a third (31 per cent) of voters of Reform's coalition partner, Eesti 200, thought the same, while for supporters of the third coalition party, the Social Democrats (SDE), further away on the political spectrum from Reform than Reform and Eesti 200 are from each other, the figure was as high as 57 per cent.

Of the three opposition parties, more than 90 per cent of supporters thought Kallas should go, ranging from 91 per cent of Isamaa voters to 94 per cent who support the Center Party, to 99 per cent for the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) – Reform and EKRE leaders often utilize such controversies to underscore both the stark differences between them and the fact that they are the two largest parties by support and Riigikogu seats.

Of encouraging signs for the prime minister, the figure of Eesti 200 respondents to the Norstat survey who thought Kallas should resign over the controversy had fallen in the space of a week, from 48 per cent to 31 per cent as noted.

To the question "Do you think the Kaja Kallas (ie. relating to her husband's business – ed.) eastern (ie. Russia-bound – ed.) transport scandal will damage the reputation of Estonia abroad?" 21 per cent answered "No" or "Rather no", while 72 per cent responded "Yes" or "Rather yes."

"What the elephant thinks of us," ie. how Estonian is viewed in other countries, is a common motif in Estonian society, particularly when controversies erupt; similar conversations were being held in 2019 when then-interior minister Mart Helme made a series of critical remarks about NATO.

Again, by party, voters of opposition parties were more inclined to think that the saga had indeed harmed Estonia's reputation internationally (98 per cent for EKRE, 94 per cent for Center and 91 per cent for Isamaa) compared with Reform-voting respondents (28 per cent of whom thought the same).

The figure was also high among supporters of the other two coalition parties (73 per cent of SDE voters thought the scandal had been harmful to Estonia's image abroad; 55 per cent of Eesti 200 supporters thought so too).

Norstat conducted its latest poll on September 6 between the hours of 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. and quizzed 1,000 Estonian citizens of voting age.