The Sweden Democrats currently sit behind the Social Democrat Party (SAP) and the Sweden Green Party, with just a month to go before the country’s national elections.
The left-leaning Social Democrats are leading with 26 percent of the vote, while the Sweden Democrats are third at 16.8 percent in the poll carried out by Sifo between August 6-9.
The Sweden Democrats’ results are more than a 2 percent drop than the previous poll earlier this month by Inizo, which placed them at 19.1 percent.
The hardline SD party entered the Swedish Parliament for the first time in 2010. In 2014 they became the third largest party in the country after receiving 12.9 percent of the votes.
In 2015, the right-wing SD party pushed back against the arrival of 163,000 asylum-seekers to Sweden in 2015 during the refugee crisis.
It helped contribute to the increase of the foreign-born population from 11 percent at the turn of the century to 18 percent this year.
The rightwingers topped three previous polls in July and August, gaining popularity for their anti-immigration stance.
The Social Democrats, led by Stefan Loven, need 24 percent to give them a majority in September – but analysts say it would still be their worst result in an election since 1912.
For 60 years until the early 1990s, the SAP received more than 40 percent of the election votes. On several occasions they achieved more than half of the votes and held an overall majority of the seats in the Swedish Parliament.
Meanwhile, the Green Party saw a rise in votes to 5.6 percent, in the wake of the recent wildfire crisis that swept through the country this summer.
Blazes raged through Sweden, prompting firefighters to battle the worst drought in 74 years, and led to the government appealing for help from other countries.
Analysts believe the Green Party lost the last election due to directing their campaign against the Swedish Democrats and not concentrating on environmental issues.
Toivo Sjörén, Sifo’s opinion manager said of the new results: “Environmental parties still have the highest confidence in the climate and environmental issues. With the summer’s extreme weather and fires, it appears heavily in the election campaign.”
The latest poll was conducted between August 6 – 9 and polled 2,294 randomly selected interviewees over 18-years-old.