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Swedish poll shows gains for the Left Party after toppling government

The Local Sweden
The Local Sweden - [email protected]
Swedish poll shows gains for the Left Party after toppling government
STOCKHOLM 20210621 Vänsterpartiets partiledare Nooshi Dadgostar håller en pressträff efter misstroendeomröstning mot statsminister Stefan Löfven i riksdagen. Foto: Nils Petter Nilsson / TT kod 62260

A snap election may or may not be on the cards this year, but if it happens, the latest polls suggest the Left Party would get their highest level of support in two decades, while the Liberals could fail to enter parliament at all.

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Overall, the right-of-centre bloc comprising the Moderate Party, Christian Democrats and Sweden Democrats would get a slight parliamentary majority, a new poll carried out by Ipsos for Dagens Nyheter shows.

The survey showed that the Left Party saw a boost in support after leader Nooshi Dadgostar made good on a pledge to vote to bring down the centre-left government if it made moves to introduce market rents. They would rise from 10 to 12 percent of the voter share, the poll showed.

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The Liberals however fell to just two percent, the lowest rating since these polls began in 1979, and the government's junior coalition partner the Green Party would also fall below the four percent needed to enter parliament at only three percent.

The Social Democrats got 24 percent in the survey, a fall of 2 points since the last one of this kind, while the Centre Party got 10 percent.

On the right, the Moderates got 22 percent, the Sweden Democrats 19, and the Christian Democrats six percent.

All this means that if people voted the same way in a parliamentary election, the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Sweden Democrats would get 177 seats between them, a narrow majority out of a total of 349. The Liberal Party, which currently props up the centre-left government in exchange for a certain level of support in policy, has said it would switch sides and pursue a right-of-centre government with these three parties, but the DN/Ipsos survey would not see them get any parliamentary representation.

These results are not too different from those of a major party sympathy survey by Statistics Sweden last month, which gave the Moderates 22.4 percent, the Sweden Democrats 18.9 percent, Christian Democrats 4.5 percent, Centre Party 9.5 percent, Social Democrats 28.2 percent, and Left Party 8.9 percent. That survey too put the Liberal and Green Parties below the parliamentary threshold, at 2.5 and 3.8 percent respectively.

After Prime Minister Stefan Löfven's centre-left government was toppled in a no-confidence vote on Monday, an election later this year is a real possibility. But Löfven has until next week to decide, and also has the option to resign and ask the speaker to investigate whether a government backed by a majority of MPs can be formed.

In order for that to happen, it would require either the Centre and Left Parties -- which both currently back the centre-left government but disagree on many policies, including rental policy -- to reach a compromise, or for the Centre Party to agree to back a right-wing government which would need to rely on the support of the Sweden Democrats.

 

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