Alliance leads, Social Democrats at record low

The Alliance parties lead over the opposition has increased a little in the latest opinion poll, by Synovate on behalf of the Dagens Nyheter daily.

• Air pollution worse than smoking mother: study (5 Feb 12)
• Swedish consumers 'less happy' in 2011 (23 Jan 12)
• Social Democrats continue to fall in polls (1 Jan 12)

The Alliance leads the Red-Green opposition by 3.7 percentage points, a climb of 2.5 points since last week's poll.

The governing coalition scored 48.7 percent in the new poll, compared to 45 percent for the three party opposition bloc.

"There is an indication of a momentum in favour of the centre-right during the course of the survey, but the situation remains completely open," said Nicklas Källebring to the newspaper.

Mona Sahlin's Social Democrats continued to decline, down 2.1 percentage points on last week's poll to 29.2 percent - their lowest level since February 1997. The Moderate Party is the largest party in Sweden, up 1.6 points to 30.9 percent.

The party has experienced a steady decline from 35 percent in the spring, the level it achieved at the last general election in 2006. The surveys show that the party has since 2006 lost around the same number of voters to the Green Party as to the Moderate Party.

Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt's Moderate Party made gains in the cities and is once again the largest political party in Sweden, up 1.6 points to 30.9 percent.

None of the changes on last week's Synovate poll are categorized as statistically significant.

The other three Alliance parties are all around the 5-6 percent, comfortably over the threshold for parliamentary seats.

The Left Party represented the only bright spot for the Red-Greens, with Lars Ohly's party climbing 1.7 points to 6.1 percent.

With a little over three weeks to go to the general election, the far-right Sweden Democrats came in under the threshold for parliamentary seats for the second consecutive poll, retaining the support of 3.4 percent of the electorate.

Synovate's results are based on interviews with over 2,000 voters. The poll showed that with 20 percent of voters remaining undecided before the election on September 19th, the race remained very much open.

Synovate poll results, August 27th (changes since last week's poll in parentheses)

Government
Moderate Party 30.9 (+1.6)
Centre Party 5.4 (+0.3)
Liberal Party 6.7 (-0.7)
Christian Democrats 5.7 (-0.2)

Total: 48.7 (Election 2006: 48.2)

Opposition
Social Democrats 29.2 (-1.2)
Left Party 6.1 (+1.7)
Green Party 9.7 (-1.1)

Total: 45 (Election 2006: 46.1)

Sweden Democrats 3.6 (no change)