Sweden Democrats continue slide: poll

The Sweden Democrats have dropped from 5 percent to 2.9 percent in the latest Skop poll, below the 4 percent threshold for parliamentary seats at a general election.

The centre-left coalition polled 50.4 percent and increased their lead from 3.5 to 5.1 percent over the centre-right who claimed 45.3 percent.

Both political blocs increased their support in the poll, the centre-left by 2 percentage points and and centre-right by 0.4 percent as interest cooled for fringe parties.

“With the ongoing euro crisis and short time to the next election the interest in concentrating on the two political blocs. This month’s losers are the small parties outside of the parliament,” said Birgitta Hultåker at Skop in a statement.

The Moderate Party climbed to 30.3 percent in the poll (28.1), with the main opposition party the Social Democrats just ahead on 33.7 (33.6). The Green Party polled 10.9 percent (10.3) with coalition colleague the Left Party edging up to 5.8 percent (4.5).

The remaining three centre-right parties all dropped in support with the Liberal Party (Folkpartiet) claiming 6 percent (7), the Centre Party 5 (5.2) and the Christian Democrats 4 percent (4.6).

The biggest drop was however reserved for the far-right Sweden Democrats whose support was cut almost in half over the month to 2.9 percent (5).

“That which matters for us is the longer term opinion situation. The residual trend is still positive for us if you add together all of the surveys that have been published over the past months,” said SD press secretary, William Petzäll.

The Skop poll is not alone in showing a decline for SD, with the Sifo poll for May showing a drop to 3.5 percent as focus shifted to the main strands of political debate and away from immigration.

The Skop election barometer interviewed 1,133 Swedish citizens aged 18-84 between April 28th and May 19th and asked “Which party do you like best in national politics.”