Anti-immigrant populists top Swedish opinion poll

The anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats topped an opinion poll for the first time on Thursday in poll results published by the newspaper Metro.

Jimmie Akesson's party - which first entered parliament in 2010 and doubled their votes in last year's national elections - was preferred by 25.2 percent of those polled, ahead of both the ruling Social Democrats and the conservative Moderate Party.

"This is not very surprising. We've seen this tendency for a long time," political scientist Soren Holmberg at Gothenburg University told Metro, noting that nearly half of voters now consider immigration the most important political issue.

Recent murder cases with links to immigration - such as a recent double stabbing at an Ikea shopping center - may have boosted the party's performance, Holmberg said.

The poll, conducted at the behest of the newspaper, asked some 1,500 people how they would vote if elections were held today but drew criticism in local media for not randomly selecting its participants.

Political commentator Stina Morian said the survey had been completed under "special circumstances" in mid-August, shortly after the Ikea murders and a much-publicized anti-begging ad run by the Sweden Democrats in the Stockholm subway.

"The mood on the web and in social media was incredibly vitriolic at the time. I think this is the culmination of a debate we've had for a long time," Morian said.