Swedish opinion polls show tightening race between left and right flanks

Sweden heads into Sunday’s election with a razor-thin gap between its left and right blocs, according to Friday polling: 50.8% to 47.6%. The ruling right-wing coalition, propped up by the Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots that has grown from 17.5% of the vote in 2018 to 20.6% in 2022, is now angling for actual ministerial seats rather than just parliamentary leverage.

Meanwhile the Social Democrats, Sweden’s dominant party for over a century, have quietly adopted much of the right’s tough-on-crime, tough-on-immigration posture, a strategy borrowed from their sister party in Denmark. Canvassers on both sides reported thousands of door-knock conversations and a debate stage that devolved into personal insults, including one candidate asking another why she is always so angry.

An analyst noted Sweden hasn’t gone as far as Denmark yet, meaning it hasn’t started publicly questioning international human rights conventions. That qualifier is doing a lot of work for a country whose largest left party now campaigns on borrowed right-wing furniture.

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