Poll blow for Social Democrats

The Novus Opinion poll shows the Social Democrats, who have been Sweden’s largest party for decades, are now only 2.2 percentage points ahead of Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt’s Moderate Party.

The gap between the centre-right governing Alliance for Sweden and the centre-left Red-Green opposition is now within the margin of error. The opposition was supported by 47.9 percent of respondents, the government by 46.2 percent.

The Social Democrats, hoping to regain power in September’s election after four years in the wilderness, fell back 1.1 points since Novus’s last poll, achieving 32.5 percent. The former communist Left Party saw its support increase for the second poll in a row and is now on 6.9 percent – its best result for a year. The Green Party was practically unchanged, rising just 0.2 points to 8.5 percent.

On the government side, the Centre Party and Christian Democrats saw support rise by 0.4 points to 5.3 and 4.5 percent respectively. The Moderates were down 0.9 points to 30.3 percent. The Liberal Party was down 0.2 points to 6.1 percent.

The nationalist Sweden Democrats saw support fall by 0.6 points to 4 percent, meaning they would just squeak into the Riksdag and hold the balance of power if the poll result was replicated in an election.