STOCKHOLM, June 4 (Reuters) - Sweden's centre-left opposition looks likely to win power in the parliamentary election in September, ousting the right-wing government, according to an opinion poll released by the national statistics office on Thursday.
Swedes go to the polls on September 13 and campaigning is gaining steam with gang crime, cost of living, security, immigration and energy supply high on the agenda.
Support for the four opposition parties, of which former prime minister Magdalena Andersson's Social Democrats is the biggest by far, stood at 55.2%, up from the 48.9% they won in the 2022 election.
Support Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson's governing bloc, including the closely aligned anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats, stood at 42.6%, down from the 49.6% they won in the closely fought 2022 election.
"Extremely bad news for the government coalition. I think this means that they will lose their majority in the election," Gothenburg University political science Professor Jonas Hinnfors said.
"There has been a remarkable stability in public opinion throughout the mandate period, which makes it less likely that anything will happen during the summer."
In another blow to the right-wing bloc's chances of staying in power, junior coalition member the Liberals polled far below the 4% threshold to win Riksdag seats.
Andersson's Social Democrats, Sweden's largest party, was set to win 33.9%, the poll showed, up from 30.3% four years ago.
The current three-party minority government, supported by the Sweden Democrats, has over the past four years clamped down on immigration, cut taxes, brought Sweden into NATO, and tried to rein in gang-related violence.
It remains unclear with which other opposition parties Andersson would form a government. Still, a shift in power is expected to entail more welfare spending but no big shift in policies concerning immigration, defence or support for Ukraine.
Kristersson has said he aims to form a government including the Sweden Democrats, once political outcasts who have steadily gained support since they first entered parliament in 2010.
Sweden's second-biggest party, the poll showed support for the Sweden Democrats at 18.3% compared to 20.5% in the 2022 election.
The statistics office polled 4,542 people between April 28 and May 28 for the survey, which is typically the largest carried out by any pollster.
(Reporting by Johan Ahlander and Anna Ringstrom, editing by Terje Solsvik and Niklas Pollard)
