Liberals close in on Sweden’s parliamentary threshold

Sweden’s Liberals are edging back toward the parliamentary threshold in the second-to-last DN/Ipsos poll before the election, after a spring slump that saw their support rounded to just 1% in June.

Simona Mohamsson’s party received 3.5% in the survey, completed on Monday. DN noted that the party had not recorded a stronger result in roughly a year. The figure also reaches the level at which voters in an earlier DN/Ipsos poll said tactical voting could be worthwhile for a party in danger of falling out of parliament. Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Åkesson has said right-wing voters should abandon the Liberals if their support falls below 3.5%.

The survey suggested a positive trend for the Liberals. In the latter half of the polling period, the party moved above the 4% threshold, although the number of respondents in that segment was small. “The Liberals appear to be continuing to grow,” Ipsos polling analyst Nicklas Källebring said. Much of the new support came from former Liberal voters who had moved to the Moderates.

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The Liberals appear to be continuing to grow.

The Social Democrats, meanwhile, fell to 27.1%, marking their ninth consecutive decline. Källebring said the result would be the party’s worst since universal suffrage was introduced if repeated in an election. Support appeared to weaken further toward the end of the polling period.

Despite the Liberals’ improvement, the opposition remained nearly eight points ahead of the Tidö parties. The Moderates stood at 17.4%, little changed from August but below their 2022 election result. The Sweden Democrats fell to 17.7%, their second-lowest figure of the parliamentary term, with losses going mainly to the Christian Democrats and the Liberals.

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If this were an election result, it would be the Social Democrats’ worst since universal suffrage was introduced.