Swedish liberal opposition leads in polls for September 14 election.

Swedish opposition holds strong poll lead as election nears

Sweden's center-left opposition maintained a clear lead ten days ahead of national elections, two opinion polls published on Thursday showed, with one pointing to a wider lead for the grouping of the Social Democrats, Greens and Left parties.

The three opposition parties would get 48.0 percent of the vote, according to the Novus poll of 1,628 people conducted between Aug. 29 and Sept. 2 and published by television channel TV4. That was up 1.1 percentage points from the previous Novus poll released on Monday. Support for Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt's minority, center-right Alliance government stood at 38.1 percent, down 1.3 percent.

The Ipsos poll, of 1,463 people, conducted between Aug. 22 to Sept. 1 and published by the Dagens Nyheter daily, showed support for the right wing, anti-immigration Swedish Democrats' increased slightly to 9.7 percent. In the Novus poll, that party's support fell 0.4 percentage points to 10.2 percent.

The Ipsos poll gave the left-leaning Feminist Initiative party 4.0 percent, exactly reaching the threshold needed to win seats in parliament for the first time. The Novus poll showed support for Fi up 0.4 percentage points at 2.5 percent.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/04/us-sweden-election-idUSKBN0GZ0DV20140904

Swedes 'most willing in Europe' to help Ukraine

Seventy-three percent of Swedes questioned by research group Transatlantic Trends said that they thought Sweden should provide Ukraine with political and economic support even if it worsened conflict with Russia, compared with 58 percent of respondents across the European Union.



Swedes were evenly split when asked about participating in future NATO operations with 47 per cent supporting involvement and 49 per cent against.

However, when questioned on how they would feel if an operation was carried out with a mandate from the United Nations, 62% of Swedes said they would be in favour.

The global survey also questioned respondents about immigration, with 23 percent of Swedes saying they felt there were too many immigrants in their country, one of the lowest figures in Europe. Brits topped the poll in this area, with 57 percent questioning the number of people moving there.

http://www.thelocal.se/20140903/swedes-most-willing-in-europe-to-support-ukraine

Immigrants are 14.3% of Sweden's population. In the UK immigrants are 11.9%. In the US it is 11.5%.