One in five Swedes say they will vote for the anti-mass migration Sweden Democrats, according to official numbers from Statistics Sweden. The rating is the highest the party has ever achieved in the biannual survey.
The 9,000 voter polls – the biggest in Sweden, and well regarded for having the smallest margin of error – shows that support for the “socially conservative” Sweden Democrats has increased by 5.5 per cent since May, and by seven per cent since the last election in 2014.
Party secretary Richard Jomshof told Swedish news agency TT: “I think we have the potential to become the largest party.”
He added that the ongoing migrant crisis is strengthening his party’s support, saying:
“I am absolutely convinced that the party has benefited from the situation that has arisen in recent months, even if we do not acknowledge the situation.”
The poll found that support for Sweden’s two main parties had dropped in the same period. The governing Social Democrats have 27.6 per cent support, down from 30 in May, while the centre-right opposition Moderates drop 2.1 points to 23.5.
“That there is growing support for our views, puts much pressure on the other parties,” Mr Jomshof said.
Last month the party’s leader Jimmy Akesson gave a rare interview to Breitbart London from Molenbeek in Brussels, the terror capital of Europe. When asked if he thought he was going to be the next Prime Minister of Sweden, Mr. Akesson said:
“Probably not… but I hope I can have that much influence on the next prime minister. The new government that we have in three years will at least use the most important parts of our policies to make it a little better and to change the society in our direction. I’m satisfied with that. I have no need for being prime minister. I would rather be a carpenter or something like that. I’ve done it for 20 years because no one else did it.”
The Local quotes political scientist Tommy Möller, who said he was not surprised by the Sweden Democrats’ popularity: “It is not entirely unexpected that Sweden Democrats are doing better in the light of the refugee crisis and terrorist threats stories that have dominated politics this autumn.”
In October, the Swedish Foreign Minister admitted the country was facing “collapse” thanks to the huge numbers of migrants that have arrived in recent years.
Margot Wallstrom said her country could not keep taking so many people and maintain its public services: “I think most people feel that we cannot maintain a system where perhaps 190,000 people will arrive every year – in the long run, our system will collapse.
“And that welcome is not going to receive popular support.”
The 19.9 per cent support for the Sweden Democrats is the highest rating they have ever received in a Statistics Sweden poll. However, a poll by YouGov last month put the party in first place on 26.7 per cent. That figure was widely disputed by the Swedish media, who wrote it off as an outlier.
The latest rating, however, builds on steadily rising support and comes from a company usually trusted by the country’s media.
A separate poll this weekend found that nearly half of Swedes now fear terror attacks in their country, up from 34 per cent after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January.