The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats has become the largest party in Sweden according to one opinion poll that underscores the rise of nationalist groups across the traditional Nordic stronghold of social democracy.
The Sweden Democrats received 25.2 per cent in the YouGov poll for August, almost double their score in last September's parliamentary elections and ahead of the governing Social Democrats on 23.4 per cent and the leading centre-right Moderates on 21 per cent.
The surge in support reflects growing worries over immigration and integration in Sweden, which has taken more asylum seekers in recent years than any other European country relative to the size of its population. It also comes after two people were stabbed to death in an Ikea store in Sweden, with the main suspect being an asylum seeker on the verge of being deported.
"This is a historic day . . . It is obvious that it feels a little surreal. We are many who have fought for years to reach this point and now we are here," a Sweden Democrat spokesman told local media.
The poll is the latest indication of how populist, anti-immigration parties are on the march in the Nordics. The Danish People's Party was the second biggest in June's elections as were the True Finns in Finland's April vote.
Both the True Finns and the Progress party in Norway joined coalition governments for the first time in the last election.
But that option has not been open until now to the Sweden Democrats, which because of its roots in the neo-Nazi movement has been ostracised by all the other parties.
Political scientists cite that isolation as one of the biggest explanations for the surge in support for the Sweden Democrats as the party represents, for some, the only credible opposition. It follows a December deal on the budget between six of the eight parties in parliament, including all the main centre-left and centre-right groups.
YouGov's methods are questioned by other polling companies as it uses self-recruited internet panels. But other polling companies have also vastly underestimated the strength of anti-immigration parties across Europe, including in Sweden's elections last year. YouGov's poll for July already showed the Sweden Democrats on 22.1 per cent, within 1 percentage point of being the largest party.
The growing refugee crisis in Europe led Germany on Wednesday to say it expects to receive a record 800,000 asylum seekers this year, more than all of the EU combined received in 2014.
By contrast, Swedish authorities recently cut their forecasts on how many asylum seekers would arrive this year from 90,000 to 74,000. But a number of violent incidents - including shootings and hand grenade attacks, especially in the southern city of Malmö - have led to questions about the segregation and integration of the large number of immigrants already in Sweden.
Nicholas Aylott, a political scientist at Södertörn University, said the establishment parties were close to panic. "They will be feeling: we can't have a situation in which this pariah party is growing without limits," he said.
He argues that in the short term the biggest pressure will be faced by the centre-right parties, which in recent months have suggested a few small restrictions on immigration but nothing close to the 90 per cent reduction the populist Swedish Democrats propose.