Far-right Sweden Democrats set to become nation's 2nd largest party ahead of polls

By Leila Nezirevic

LONDON (AA) - The far-right anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats are set to become Sweden’s second largest party ahead of general elections in September as they are now four percentage points ahead of the Moderates, the country’s biggest right-wing party.

According to the most recent poll conducted by broadcaster SVT and Novus, the Sweden Democrats have the support of 21.5% of voters compared to 17.4% for the Moderates.

The Sweden Democrats celebrated the result on their Twitter account, saying it was “a good start to the week.”

“Now we’re on a sprint for the last bit of the election campaign.

“The SVT Novus poll shows that we’re starting to catch up with the Sossarna (Social Democrats). Welcome on board the victory train,” it added.

Novus CEO Torbjörn Sjöström said “this sets out the playing field between now and the election,” adding however that the new daily polls led by Novus and SVT are based on three days of polling only.

“This survey shows that it is statistically certain that the Sweden Democrats would be bigger than the Moderates if there were an election today, but exactly how large that difference is is affected by the margin of error,” he added.

The far-right populist party, once politicly forbidden in Sweden due to its neo-Nazi ties, is currently the third largest party in the country and is on its way to taking second place in the Swedish parliament, the Riksdag.