Sweden looks set to stay left

Goran Persson looks set to continue as Sweden's prime minister

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (CNN) -- Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson looks like a man with a special secret.

While centre-left parties all across Europe are in retreat, he is hoping to steer his Social Democrats to victory in the September 15 general election.

And the opinion polls give every indication he will do so.

With less than a month to go, the Temo survey for the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter showed the SDP with 40 percent support in mid-August.

The main challenger on the right, the Moderate party, dropped below 20 percent -- despite a fervent campaign for tax cuts.

Looking at the larger coalitions, the SDP and its parliamentary allies for the past four years, the ex-Communist Left party and the Greens, had the collective support of 55 percent of electors.

The four centre-right parties allied in trying to oust the government had a collective 42 percent.

During the past two years, the right has swept all before it across Europe, with victories for Silvio Berlusconi and his allies in Italy, Jacques Chirac and the conservatives in France, and Anders Fogh Rasmussen in neighbouring Denmark.

In Portugal, the Socialist Antonio Guterres crashed and Jose Manuel Durao Barroso of the centre-right came to power.

In the Netherlands, the Pim Fortuyn List, while not an identikit right-wing party, won a place in the governing coalition with the anti-immigrant policies of its murdered founder.

And Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats have lagged in polls for much of the summer in Germany -- which is due to vote a week after Sweden goes to the polls.

Against the odds

The election background in Sweden should not be a promising one for a governing party.

Telecom giant Ericsson, the country's flagship corporation, is in trouble and cutting jobs. The stock market has tumbled 35 percent, and some 80 percent of the population owns shares -- one of the highest rates in the world.

The Swedes also suffer one of the highest tax burdens in the Western world.

Persson has successfully occupied the middle ground of politics with a stout defence of the welfare state. But he will be able to ask for the country's trust because his government took tough action in the mid-1990s.

From 1993 to 2001, Sweden's government spending was cut from 66.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 51.3 percent.

So lately, in hard times, Persson has been able to boost public sector employment and cut taxes. And household incomes are expected to rise 4 percent in this election year.

There are areas of controversy, such as the huge number of Swedes on long-term sickness benefit with "burnout syndrome."

But the election is curiously bereft of "hot" issues, and most of the opposition parties lack charismatic leaders or a programme of eye-catching differentiation.

In many European countries, the rise of the right, and certainly the rise of far-right parties, has been based on playing up the immigration issue.

But while Sweden has its problems with second- and third-generation immigrant groups which have failed to integrate, there is no significant far-right group making an electoral advance in Sweden on that issue.

Indeed, Sweden seems to be a rare case of the right losing out on immigration.

The conservative Moderate party called for the country to take in 2 million immigrants over 15 years to boost growth and the social security base.

Persson and the trade unions rejected the idea, saying there was no need for it so long as there were 400,000 Swedes not involved in the job market for one reason or another. The public did not warm to the notion either.