The far-Right Sweden Democrats party has become the most popular in Sweden in a historic poll which marks the failure of long-term efforts by the traditional parties to freeze them out.
According to a poll published on Friday in the Aftonbladet newspaper, the populist party now has the support of 24 percent of voters, compared to just 22.2 percent for the Social Democrats, the lead party in the country's current coalition government.
"I'm not surprised. I've long argued we would be the biggest party sooner or later," party leader Jimmie Åkesson told the Aftonbladet newspaper.
"We've been talking constructively over gang criminality, escalating insecurity, and a migration policy that doesn't work for so many years."
Mr Åkesson has over the past 14 years transformed his party from a fringe white-power group by ruthlessly casting out its more extreme elements and claiming to uphold a zero-tolerance policy towards racism.
The poll, by the Swedish opinion research company Demoskop, marks the first time the party has been the largest party in any of the five opinion polls carried out on behalf of Sweden's mainstream newspapers and broadcasters.
The Social Democrats have been the biggest party in every election in Sweden since 1914, with the party building the country's generous welfare society over more than 40 years of unbroken rule from 1932 to 1976.
Lena Rådström Baastad, party secretary for the Social Democrats, said voters had clearly been affected by a spate of explosions in several Swedish cities and by the shooting of 15-year-old boy in a pizzeria in central Malmö earlier this month.
"It's a damned tough situation right now, so I'm not surprised when you consider what we've got against us, with gang murders, shootings and explosions. It's us, as the ruling party, who has to pay the price."
She also pointed to the difficult compromises the party had had to make in the January Agreement it agreed with the minority Centre and Liberal Parties to stay in power after last year's election.
The agreement saw the two liberal parties break with the centre-Right Alliance bloc and instead let the Social Democrats stay in power, so long as they agreed to a tax cut on some of the highest earners and reforms to the the country's 'last-in, first-out' employment law.
The parties argued that an alternative government led by the Moderate Party would have been too dependent on the tacit support of the Sweden Democrats.
But by keeping the populist right from gaining influence, they have pushed the Moderate Party and the Christian Democrats into joining the Sweden Democrats in a loose conservative bloc, while allowing Mr Åkesson to present his party as the true opposition.
"In the old days it was the Moderates and [former PM Fredrik] Reinfeldt who were challenging them, now it's us," he told Aftonbladet. "It's a welcome shift in Swedish politics."
