STOCKHOLM, Sept 3 (Reuters) – Sweden’s ruling right-wing bloc has closed in on the centre-left opposition ahead of a parliamentary election on September 13, according to a fresh opinion poll released on Thursday, the second survey this week to indicate a close race.
While earlier polls have pointed to near-certain victory for the opposition headed by Social Democrats leader Magdalena Andersson, the latest surveys show that the government of Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, in office since 2022, may still win.
Backing for the four centre-left parties was 50.6% in the Demoskop survey for dailies Aftonbladet and Svenska Dagbladet, while the three-party government and its support party, the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, stood at 47.3%.
The gap of 3.3 percentage points between left and right was the second-smallest of any Swedish opinion poll published this year and compares with a 5.8 point gap in Demoskop’s previous poll.
But the new poll still showed Kristersson’s junior coalition partner, the Liberals, firmly below parliament’s 4% threshold, at 2.8%. Taking that into account, the right would take 163 out of 345 parliamentary seats, well below 186 for the centre-left.
Two weeks ago the centre-left held a 10 percentage point lead in a poll by a different agency, which political scientists at the time said was a near-insurmountable gap to bridge before election day.
Demoskop polled 1,998 voters between August 25 and September 1.
(Reporting by Anna Ringstrom, editing by Terje Solsvik)
