Opposition retain lead in major poll

The Alliance coalition claimed 44.2 percent in the poll.

The centre-left owed its buoyant position in the polls to the Green Party who climbed 2.3 percentage points on SCB’s November poll to 10.7 percent, while the Social Democrats fell 2.7 percentage points to 33.8 percent.

The third centre-left coalition partner, the Left Party, gained 0.5 points to 5.6 percent.

Fredrik Reinfeldt’s Moderate Party increased 3.0 points to 29.2 percent, the Centre Party dropped 0.4 points to 4.6 percent, the Liberal Party (Folkpartiet) 0.7 points to 5.8 percent and the Christian Democrats fell 0.3 points to 4.5 percent.

The changes in support for all the parties between the November and May polls were considered statistically significant, with the exception of the 0.3 point decline for the Christian Democrats.

Among the Other parties category the nationalist Sweden Democrats remained the largest but their level of support declined to 3.9 percent. If an election were held in May the party would therefore come in under the threshold for parliamentary seats.

The Pirate Party dominated the remaining proportion of the Other parties category.

The SCB survey is a larger survey that the other main polling institutes and is carried out twice a year. Since 1973 the SCB May poll has always indicated the winning side in election year.

The telephone survey is based on 9,035 randomly selected voters. The fall off in the May 2010 survey was 32.1 percent which means that SCB interviewed 6,135 people.

SCB asked the question: Which party would you vote for if an election were held in the coming days?

The telephone interviews were carried out from April 28th-May 30th, with 70 percent of the calls made by May 16th, and 89 percent by May 23rd.

Statistics Sweden voter poll, May (November scores in parentheses)

Moderate Party 29.2 (26.2)

Liberal Party 5.8 (6.5)

Centre Party 4.6 (5.0)

Christian Democrats 4.5 (4.8)

Total: 44.2 percent (42.5)

Social Democrats 33.8 (36.5)

Green Party 10.7 (8.4)

Left Party 5.6 (5.1)

Total: 50.2 percent (50.0)

Others 5.7 (7.5)

The result includes the Sweden Democrats 3.9 percent, with The Pirate Party dominating the remaining proportion of the Others category (Source: Statistics Sweden).