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How Swedes would vote if an election were held today

TT/The Local
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How Swedes would vote if an election were held today
From left, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven of the Social Democrats, Moderate leader Anna Kinberg Batra, Left Party leader Jonas Sjöstedt and the Christian Democrats' Ebba Busch Thor. Photo: Maja Suslin/T

A new opinion poll from Sweden's biggest statistics agency suggests that the country's centre-left political bloc has doubled its lead on the centre-right opposition in the past six months.

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Released on Thursday, Statistics Sweden's so-called Political Party Preference Survey suggests that if an election were to be held today, the current coalition government would receive 33.7 percent of the votes – which would see them land at 41.4 percent with the Left Party's presumed backing in parliament.

That compares to the 37.9 percent who would vote for the four centre-right Alliance parties – the Moderates (M), the Centre Party (C), the Liberals (L) and the Christian Democrats (KD). However, only 3.1 percent said they would vote for the Christian Democrats, which means the party would not make it past the 4-percent barrier to get into parliament.

A total of 17.5 percent of respondents told pollsters they would throw their support behind the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD).

The figures mean that the ruling Social Democrat-Green coalition, if you also take into account the support of the Left Party in parliament, now has a lead of 3.5 percentage points on the main four-party opposition – double what they got in the last Statistics Sweden survey in May.

This does not mean they have cause to cheer. Support for both the Social Democrats (S) and the Green Party (MP) has dropped slightly in the past six months and 29.2 percent and 4.5 percent of voters, respectively, now support the two parties. However, according to Statistics Sweden, the decrease is within the margin of error.

It said the main reason behind the increased lead is that the Moderates – who are the biggest party in the Alliance opposition – have fallen by 1.9 percentage points to 22.8 percent in the new poll.

However, if you look at the November poll compared to Sweden's general election in 2014, the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats are the big winners, increasing their support by 4.6 percentage points to 17.5 percent, followed by the Left Party, up by 2 percentage points on autumn 2014.

The Green Party, which is a member of Sweden's government for the first time, has seen its support fall by 2.4 percentage points since the general election – losing more than a third of their 2014 voters.

READ ALSO: 'SD could break 20 percent barrier in next election'


The figures show how much support for the parties has increased/decreased since the 2014 election. The column on the right shows support for 'others'. Photo: SCB/Statistics Sweden

A total of 8,952 respondents took part in Statistics Sweden's survey, which asked the question "What party would you vote for if a parliamentary election were to be held in the coming days?"

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