Sweden's leading newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, recurrently consults Synovate to measure voters confidence to the different Swedish party leaders. Analyst Nicklas Källebring calls the situation for Social Democratic party leader “a nightmare scenario”.
“She loses the confidence of voters with only half a year left to her first election as prime minister candidate. And the support is lowest among Social Democratic voters, far below the other party leader's position among their own supporters”, Källebring says to Dagens Nyheter.
There have been some large changes since the last time Synovate measured the confidence in the party leaders. The upturn in confidence for the two spokesperson for the Green Party is statistically significant, so is also the downturn for Social Democratic Sahlin and the leader of the Centre party, Maud Olofsson.
Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, leader of the Moderate party, remains in first place. Exactly the half of the electorate, 50 per cent, say they have great or very great confidence in him. Reinfeldt is the only party leader who has a positive "balance of confidence", which means that there are more voters who have great confidence than the proportion who have low confidence in him.
The only challenger who becomes clear in the poll is Maria Wetterstrand, of the Greens, whose wave of success just continues. It is now 45 per cent of voters who express strong confidence in her, compared with 38 per cent in the previous poll.
Reinfeldt and Wetterstrand are now playing in a completely separate division, compared with the other party leaders. With confidence from about half of the voters for the two in the top, the rest have the confidence from just under one in four, or one in five, voters.
Olofsson slopes from 32 to 27 per cent. She has particularly lost among red-green voters. On the other hand she can console herself with a very strong support among her own Centre party voters.
Mona Sahlin drops to 26 per cent, compared with 31 in November. This is the lowest confidence level so far for her. She particularly loses support in the big cities, and among the public servants. The Social Democrats are traditionally weak in the bigger cities, but use to be very strong among public servants.
But the real issue is that Sahlin lose heavily in support among her own constituents. Just over half of the Social Democratic voters, 54 per cent, now says to have confidence in her.
Results from the poll
50 pc, Fredrik Reinfeldt, Moderate party (liberal conservative).
48 pc, Maria Wetterstrand, Green party.
27 pc, Maud Olofsson, Centre party (green liberal).
26 pc, Mona Sahlin, Social Democrats.
26 pc, Peter Eriksson, Green party.
25 pc, Göran Hägglund, Christian Democrats.
23 pc, Jan Björklund, Liberal P. party (social liberal).
22 pc, Lars Ohly, Left party (socialist).