{"id":14509,"date":"2018-09-10T01:26:12","date_gmt":"2018-09-10T01:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=14509"},"modified":"2018-09-10T01:26:12","modified_gmt":"2018-09-10T01:26:12","slug":"sweden-polls-left-right-blocs-level-as-far-right-makes-gains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=14509","title":{"rendered":"Sweden polls: Left, right blocs level as far-right makes gains"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Sweden’s centre-left governing bloc is neck-and-neck with the centre-right opposition alliance in the country’s general elections<\/a>, according to official results, which also showed gains for an anti-immigration party that has its roots in the neo-Nazi movement.<\/p>\n

With about 85 percent of Sunday’s votes counted,\u00a0the ruling Social Democrats came in first, with more than 28 percent support.<\/span><\/p>\n

Results published by\u00a0Swedish broadcaster SVT showed\u00a0The Moderates party came in second, with almost 20 percent of the vote, edging ahead of the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD).<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The SD, widely tipped to make gains in the election, won about 18 percent support,\u00a0jumping nearly five percentage points since the last elections four years ago.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

According to an exit poll released by SVT when voting ended, the Social Democrats-led centre-left bloc and the centre-right bloc, headed by the Moderates, won about 40 percent of the vote each.<\/p>\n

Around 7.5 million Swedes were eligible to cast a ballot in the vote, with final results expected to be announced before midnight (22:00 GMT).<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Social Democrats leader and incumbent Prime Minister Stefan Lofven (right) said the vote was a referendum on Sweden’s welfare state [TT News Agency\/Reuters]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull, reporting from the Swedish capital, Stockholm, said the projections did not “conclusively” indicate the make-up of the next government.<\/span><\/p>\n

“There will be a tight race between the centre-left and centre-right blocs which could be weeks away,” Hull said.<\/p>\n

“What they [the polls] do conclusively show, though, is that the worst case scenario that many Swedes had feared, that the far-right Sweden Democrats party might edge into first place, has not come to pass,” he added.<\/p>\n

The SD party, which first entered parliament in 2010, has attempted to soften its public image in recent years in a bid to widen its support among the electorate.<\/p>\n

Party leader\u00a0Jimmie\u00a0Akesson has said there is no place for racism in the party, which in the build up to the elections\u00a0called the arrival of almost 400,000 asylum seekers into Sweden<\/a> since 2012 a threat to national culture and a strain on Sweden’s welfare system.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The party presented the vote on Sunday as a ballot on\u00a0immigration and integration.<\/p>\n

Social Democratic Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, meanwhile, had repeatedly called the legislative elections a “referendum on the future of the welfare state”, while condemning “the hateful forces” in Sweden.<\/p>\n

He urged voters to “think about how they wanted to use their time on Earth”, calling on them to “stand on the right side of history”.<\/p>\n

Moderates leader Ulf Kristersson meanwhile said that after the election, Sweden would need “a strong cross-bloc cooperation to isolate the forces … pushing for Sweden to withdraw from international cooperation”.<\/p>\n

In southern Sweden, an SD stronghold, Akesson campaigned among throngs of supporters as detractors booed him and shouted “no racists on our streets”.<\/p>\n

“We’re now competing against the Social Democrats and Moderates to become the biggest party in the country,” he said, dismissing the protesters as “communists”.<\/p>\n

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<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Akesson said he hoped the Sweden Democrats win between 20 to 30 percent of votes\u00a0[Stina Stjernkvist\/Reuters via TT News]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Peter Wolodarski, chief editor of Sweden’s\u00a0Dagens Nyheter newspaper, said all three parties would likely be “disappointed” with the exit poll projections.<\/p>\n

“The situation is very unclear.\u00a0<\/span>We don\u2019t know who will form the next government, we will probably not know tomorrow, next week or next month,” Wolodarski told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

“This will take time because we have a parliamentary system with proportional representation and parties have to talk to each other, and there is no clear majority at this point,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sweden’s centre-left governing bloc is neck-and-neck with the centre-right opposition alliance in the country’s general elections, according to official results, which also showed gains for an anti-immigration party that has its roots in the neo-Nazi movement. With about 85 percent of Sunday’s votes counted,\u00a0the ruling Social Democrats came in first, with more than 28 percent…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":14510,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}