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How Swedes would vote if an election were held today

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.

Published: 1 December 2016 11:27 CET
Updated: 1 December 2016 17:27 CET
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

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?”

POLITICS

Sweden Democrats promise ‘softer tone’ after troll factory sparks right-wing rift

The Sweden Democrats on Thursday continued to hit back at a TV4 documentary that revealed a troll factory run by the far-right party, but promised to adopt a softer tone in social media when posting about its government allies in the future.

Published: 16 May 2024 13:25 CEST
Sweden Democrats promise 'softer tone' after troll factory sparks right-wing rift

The announcement came after Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson sharply criticised Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson, after the latter referred to the documentary as a “gigantic domestic influence operation” by the “collective left-liberal establishment”.

“It’s a dreadful Americanisation of politics,” Kristersson told the TT news agency, presumably referring to the similarities between former US President Donald Trump and the six-minute video posted by Åkesson in which he launched a verbal attack on Swedish journalists.

The documentary, in which a reporter working for TV4’s Kalla Fakta programme goes undercover within the Sweden Democrats’ communications department, reveals a number of things, including attempts at smear campaigns on politicians from other parties.

It reveals a total of 23 different anonymous accounts spread across TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, which are all run by the Sweden Democrats and also spread for example radical anti-immigration views. These accounts have a combined 260,000 followers and published roughly 1,000 posts in the first three months of the year, which were viewed over 27 million times.

In one clip, communications head Joakim Wallerstein tells the group of troll factory workers to “find shit” on the Christian Democrats’ top candidate for the EU parliament, Alice Teodorescu Måwe – despite the fact that the so-called Tidö coalition agreement between the Moderates, Christian Democrats, Liberals and the Sweden Democrats states that they should respect and not attack each other.

The leaders of the other three right-wing parties all called the revelations a violation of the Tidö agreement, but Kristersson told TT that the collaboration would continue, although he added that trust in the Sweden Democrats had been damaged. Asked whether or not it was possible to trust the Sweden Democrats, who until now have consistently denied rumours of a troll factory, he said:

“I can’t answer that right now,” adding “I think there are clear signs that they have smeared opponents.”

Sweden Democrat party secretary Mattias Bäckström Johansson reiterated on Thursday that they consider the documentary an “influence operation”, but promised to adjust some of their posts on social media in the future, specifically the ones that mention the other Tidö parties.

“We are prepared to make small adjustments to soften the tone going forward, so that we can again focus on solving important problems in society,” he told TT, saying that the posts were satire clips spread by two members of the party’s communications department.

He said the pair would be assigned other jobs until they’ve been trained in the Tidö agreement’s so-called “respect clause”, and that the Sweden Democrats had shown the other three parties a list of social media posts about those three parties that they would delete.

But the Liberals said it wasn’t enough and demanded that the Sweden Democrats close down all anonymous accounts, that the four Tidö parties halt all joint press conferences until the EU election, and that the Sweden Democrats commit to following the respect clause.

Representatives of the four parties were set to meet on Thursday afternoon.

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