Opposition extends poll lead to achieve majority

Sweden’s three centre-left opposition political parties have enough voter support to form their own majority, according to a new poll.

• Sweden Democrats score five percent in major poll (10 Dec 09)
• Sahlin open to centre- right cooperation (27 Nov 09)
• Green Party makes ground among voters (7 Nov 09)

If an election were held today, the Social Democratic, Left, and Green parties would receive 52.2 percent of the vote, compared with 40.8 percent for the four governing centre-right Alliance parties, a new poll by the Sifo polling company shows.

The 11.4 percent lead for the opposition marks a more than doubling of the opposition’s lead since Sifo’s early last poll in early November, when the three red-green parties held a 4.9 percent lead.

According to the Sifo results, the Green Party is now Sweden’s third largest party, with support of 10.3 percent of the voters, its best result since 1995.

“The party has been perceived as more able to govern thanks to its partnership with the Social Democrats. But the most important explanation is the debate about the climate, where the Green Party has a lot of credibility,” said Gothenburg University political scientist Sören Holmberg to the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper.

Both Holmberg and Toivo Sjörén, head of opinion measurement at Sifo, believe the recent debate about sickness benefits has clearly affected the poll’s outcome in favour of the opposition.

The three opposition parties also achieved a majority in last Thursday’s poll from Statistics Sweden, while the Alliance received 42.5 percent.

And while the 5.1 percent received by the far-right Sweden Democrats in the Sifo poll put the part comfortably in the Riksdag, the party’s won’t hold the balance of power.

The Sifo poll results come from a survey conducted between November 30th and December 10th. The poll’s 1,901 respondents were asked “which party would you vote for if the election were held today”.

The complete results are listed below, with the percent change from Sifo’s previous poll in parentheses.

Social Democrats: 36.7 percent (+3.4 percent)

Moderate Party: 25.1 (-3.4)

Green Party: 10.3 (+0.6)

Liberal Party (Folkpartiet): 6.8 (-0.2)

Left Party: 5.2 (-0.7)

Centre Party: 5.2 (+0.7)

Christian Democrats: 3.7 (-0.3)

Sweden Democrats: 5.1(-0.7)