With 10 days until Sweden’s parliamentary elections on September 13, the ruling right-of-center bloc has narrowed the gap with the left-of-center opposition, according to a fresh opinion poll published on Thursday. It is the second survey this week to point to a tight race.
While earlier polls had suggested an almost certain victory for the opposition led by Social Democrats leader Magdalena Andersson, the latest surveys show that the government of Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, in power since 2022, could still win. Support for the four left-of-center parties stood at 50.6% in the Demoskop poll for daily newspapers Aftonbladet and Svenska Dagbladet, while the three-party government and its supporting party, the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, had 47.3%. The 3.3 percentage point gap between the left and right was the second smallest in any Swedish poll published this year, compared with a 5.8 percentage point lead in the previous Demoskop survey.
Party support and seat forecast
However, the new poll still showed that Kristersson’s junior coalition partner, the Liberals, remained well below the 4% threshold to enter parliament, with 2.8% support. Factoring this in, the right-wing bloc would secure 163 of the 345 parliamentary seats, far short of the left-of-center’s 186.
Two weeks ago, the left-of-center bloc held a 10 percentage point lead in another agency’s poll. Political analysts at the time called such a margin nearly insurmountable by election day.
The Demoskop poll was conducted among 1,998 voters from August 25 to September 1.
Source: The Straits Times
