Another poll

The ousted Social Democratic Party receives record support in the latest poll.
After ten years in power prime minister Göran Persson lost last fall, and consequently abandoned deck for successor Mona Sahlin, the partys first woman chairperson.

Synovate Temo gauges popular support for her and her party at 46.3. Quite an improvement from election night's 35.0 percent, the worst result since before universal sufferage.

Curiously, the social democrats have done best in the polls during times in opposition during the last quarter century. Olof Palme, assassinated February 28th 1986, received a record 52.5 percent as leader of the opposition in 1982. Ingvar Carlsson scored 51.5 twelve years later.

The social democrats has virtually never held government by a majority purely of their own (it's a bit complicated, up until 1971 we had two houses of parliament and theoretically the s-party received over 50 percent of the popular vote in 1968, but the upper house was not involved in the election). Still, they tend to receive record polls in opposition.

That's some bad news for the ruling righet-liberal-centrist-christian democrat coalition, "The Alliance".

Not only has the social democrats have managed to hold office for 65 of the last 75 years. They have also managed to score top support in the polls OUT of office, and not in.

Reciprocally, the parties to the right of Parliament's (Riksdagen) aisle have failed miserably twice before. Regrettably, the odds seems to be againss them this time too.