Norway Election: Over 500,000 Have Already Voted

Over 560,000 Norwegians have already chosen to cast their votes, according to the Norwegian electoral authority Valgdirektoratet on Monday.

Prior to the parliamentary election in September, the battle seems to be between a red-green government led by Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre's Labour Party (AP) and a bourgeois government led by the immigration-critical Progress Party (FRP). In a survey from Norwegian TV2 on Friday, the red-greens received a majority in the parliament, but FRP continued to move forward with two percentage points.

"It is motivating with a red-green majority. At the same time, the survey shows that the election will be even", commented Gahr Støre on the survey to TV2.

FRP has gone to the election with promises of tougher measures against criminal gangs. Earlier in August, party leader Sylvi Listhaug traveled to the Swedish-Norwegian border to launch a package of measures aimed at "taking back safety in Norway".

Now we see that the problems that Sweden has are also starting to affect Norway heavily. We are on our way to developing the Swedish situation, she said, among other things.

For the classic bourgeois major party Høyre, led by former Prime Minister Erna Solberg, the situation looks increasingly bleak. In the latest surveys, support is around 15 percent, which means that Solberg's party has lost nearly 350,000 voters since the 2021 election.