Both the Labour Party in opposition and the Conservative Party in government lost voter support in the latest public opinion poll conducted by research firm Ipsos MMI for newspaper Dagbladet. Both also lost the same relative number of voters, falling 1.8 percentage points to 36.8 percent and 21.4 percent respectively.
The Conservatives’ partner in Norway’s government coalition, the Progress Party, helped make up for the loss. It gained 1.5 points to claim support from 14.3 percent of Norwegian voters, a welcome recovery from polls earlier this year that showed the Progress Party dipping close to the single-digit levels held by the country’s small parties in Parliament.
As Parliament adjourned for the summer and politicians started heading home or off for summer holidays, the government’s two small support parties also logged some gains. The Christian Democrats moved up to 5.6 percent of the vote and the Liberal Party to 4 percent, a level also claimed by the Socialist Left Party (SV), after months of hovering at levels that would kick them out of Parliament if the poll results had been an election. The Greens and the Center Party shared the rest of the voters, with both of them logging small gains as well.
newsinenglish.no staff
