The Swedish Pirate Party is rising in the latest opinion poll for the election to the European Parliament in May, now at 3%, compared to 1.3% in February.

According to a new poll conducted by SKOP, 3% of Swedes would vote for the Pirate Party if the European elections were held today. While this is a rise from the February figures of 1.3% and 1.5% respectively, it is still too low to elect a single mandate.

In the 2009 elections, the Pirate Party received a surprisingly high 7.1 %, which gave the party two seats in the European Parliament. From today’s figures it is unlikely that the party will manage the same kind of success. A 4% is the treshold needed to keep  one of the seats in parliament.

That aside, it is important to note that the poll was conducted quite a while ago, from early February to early March, and a lot of things have happened since, including increased media exposure as a result of the news of the Data Retention Directive being declared invalid. Unusually few polls are conducted for the European elections in Sweden as both media and most parties focus their energy on the national elections which will be held in September later this year.

The poll also shows a relatively low trust in the nationalistic party Sverigedemokraterna (at just 5 %), in comparison to their much higher figures in the polls for national parliament, where they have been seated since 2010. The Christian Democrats’ figures of 3 % mean they might lose their mandate, a result similar to their figures for the national parliament. The category of “other parties” are currently polled to reach less than one percent in total (as compared to 6% in 2009). This low prognosis for “other parties” is most likely a result of the absence of the EU critical party Junilistan, who didn’t manage to get re-elected to the parliament when the Pirate Party entered during the last election.

See how the other Pirate Parties are doing in the European Elections.

Picture of Christian Engström, current MEP for the Swedish Pirate Party, CC BY Stefan Roudén.

Update 27/4: The original article listed a poll result at 2 % – the real number is 3 %.

About Anton Nordenfur

I’m party organiser for the Swedish Pirate Party, and work as a freelancing writer and translator. I’m primarily interested in research politics and LGBTQ rights, and blog in Swedish over at antonnordenfur.com.

 

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The Swedish Pirate Party is rising in the latest opinion poll for the election to the European Parliament in May, now at 3%, compared to 1.3% in February. According to…