There is a shift in opinion underway in the Swedish election campaign. With the September 11th election two weeks out, three recent opinion polls presented in daily Swedish news outlet Expressen put nationalist conservative Swedish Democrats, SD, in second place among likely voters.
In the poll from Ipsos, the SD gets 20.7%, compared to 17.5% in the 2018 election and 12.9% in 2014. The polling firm Novus, which conducted its opinion poll together with the public broadcaster SVT, found SD at 22.8%, while the poll from SIFO put SD at 20.8%.
In all three polls, the social democrats remain in first place, earning 28-31% of likely votes.
The SD has edged out the moderate party as the largest in the four-party center-right coalition. According to the three polls cited by Expressen, the conservative-leaning moderates currently poll in the 16.6-17.5% range, with the Christian democrats coming in third at 5.5-6.1%. The smallest party within the center-right coalition, the liberals, are within the 4.6-5.5% bracket.
Election law in Sweden requires a party to earn at least 4% nationally to win seats in parliament.
The social democrats, who currently govern Sweden, have three allies in their leftist coalition: the left party (former communists), which currently poll at 7.3-8.5%, the center party (5.6-6.9%), and the greens (4.8-5.7%).
It remains unclear which coalition will win a majority of the 349 seats in parliament. Explains Expressen:
Taken all together, the DN/Ipsos poll shows that the four parties preferring [social democrat] Magdalena Andersson as prime minister … come in at a total of 50.8 percent. The right-leaning quartet behind [moderate leader] Ulf Kristersson … get a total of 47.4%.
The SIFO poll puts the leftist coalition at exactly 50%, with the four opposition parties at 48.3%. In the Novus poll, however, the center-right coalition edges out the Left, adding up 52.2% of the votes. This would equal 184 parliamentary seats, nine more than needed for a majority.
