Pirate Party heads for parliament: poll

The Pirate Party remains buoyant after its EU election success and could be on its way to claiming seats in the Swedish parliament, a new poll shows.

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The EU election's other success story - the Liberal party - also increased its support, by 2.4 percent to 8.8 percent, according to the Sifo poll published in Svenska Dagbladet and partner newspapers on Sunday.

"The success in the EU election has given the (Pirate) party a boost," said Toivo Sjörén at Sifo to the newspaper.

The poll indicated that the support for the group classified as "other parties" had grown to 4.2 percent, with average support for the Pirate Party of 2.7 percent, over the first two week period of the survey. But in the third week of the survey, shortly after the election, five percent of the those polled expressed support for the Pirate Party.

The far-right Sweden Democrats also received a boost after their exposure in the EU elections, claiming the backing of just over four percent of those interviewed in the week after the poll. For the entire survey period the party claimed 3.1 percent.

The three party red-green opposition retained a small lead over the governing Alliance with the backing of 46.5 percent of those polled to 46.2 percent for the government.

The Social Democrats declined by two percentage points to 32.8 but remain the largest party.

Fredrik Reinfeldt's Moderate party declined 0.6 points to 28.2 percent. The Centre party dipped 0.8 points to 5 percent, while the Christian Democrats enjoyed a marginal increase of 0.1 points to 4.2 percent.

The Left party continued their decline after their catastrophic showing in the EU elections, falling 0.6 points to 5.2 percent. The Green party meanwhile enjoyed a further boost, up 0.4 points to 8.5 percent.

The Sifo survey interviewed 1,897 people between June 1st and June 11th.