The opinion institute's miss: Underestimated the Moderates' strong final sprint in the election

The Liberals' upswing was captured, and it was clear that the SD would stagnate or lose - but that the Moderates would succeed so well - it was missed by all opinion institutes.

The worst was Verian, where the Moderates got 15.8 percent - according to the election results on Monday morning, the party got 19.9 percent.

- It is the same pattern that was observed in the 2022 election. It is probably due to a strong final sprint where the focus was on the prime ministerial duels, says Per Oleskog Tryggvason, head of opinion at Indikator.

He emphasizes that on Monday it is a bit early to make financial statements - but at the same time he does not expect any major changes. This is what the list looks like - the number indicates the average deviation between the last opinion poll and the election result in percentage points:

1. Valu Svt's election survey: 0.6

2. Ipsos (DN): 0.8

3. Indicator (Echo): 0.9

4. TV4's Novus on election day and Verian/ (Svt): 1.1

6. Novus (Tv4) and Demoskop: 1.3

7. Sentio (National): 1.4

- The most prominent pattern is that the moderates were underestimated. It appears that as many as a third of voters made up their minds late and they went mostly to the right.

The opinion institutes had indicated that it would be even between the blocks - but not that it would be so even.

- The primary conclusion is that the measurement methods basically work well. Despite this precision, most institutes failed to predict how even the election would actually be, says Johan Martinsson, head of analysis at Demoskop.

This also applies to SVT's election poll Valu:

- They showed impressive precision with an average deviation of just 0.6 percentage points - but still gave a false picture of the block differences which looked like a clear victory for the opposition rather than the even result it turned out to be, says Johan Martinsson.

Jonas Hinnfors, professor of political science at the University of Gothenburg, also believes that the opinion institutes did their job.

- Valu missed the results of the Moderate Party and the Green Party, and there is reason to think about why. But you have to remember that opinion polls are not reality. It is a craft that has many sources of error. Overall, they succeeded well, says Jonas Hinnfors.

The most challenging thing for the opinion institutes has been the large, late voter movements that the rise of the Liberals created.

- We had them very low, along with many other institutes, just a few weeks ago. The upvote dynamic that follows is a challenge to capture. But we are very satisfied that we managed to capture that movement, says Per Oleskog Tryggvason.

Already today, the opinion institutes are starting their post-election surveys.

According to Johan Martinsson at Demoskop, the central questions are why the Moderates were so consistently underestimated, what proportion of the Liberals' votes were actual support votes and where the Sweden Democrats' expected voters went.