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Norway looks to shift right

September 9, 2013

Polls have opened in Norway for parliamentary elections that could lead to the first change of power since 2005. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg's center-left coalition has trailed in polls for months.

https://p.dw.com/p/19dxP
Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg casts his ballot for the parliamentary election at a polling station in Oslo, September 8, 2013. (Picture: REUTERS/Fredrik Varfjell/NTB Scanpix)
Image: Reuters

Should polls bear out, the anti-immigrant Progress Party would assume power for the first time as part of a right-wing coalition led by Erna Solberg's Conservatives.

The bloc promises tax cuts, privatizations and a smaller government, putting it on pace to take a sweeping election win on Monday and oust the Labour-led government accused of wasting a once-in-a-lifetime economic boom.

"We need more legs to stand on in the economy, not just oil," Solberg said. "We are a liberal-conservative party, we do not make revolutions ... This will be a road of small steps."

In 2011, Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people in bombing and shooting attacks aimed at the center-left Labour Party and drawing attention to an anti-immigrant manifesto he had written. In the first vote since that attack, 33 survivors of the massacre on Utoya island, mostly teen members of the Labour Party 's youth wing, have sought seats in the election.

mkg/tj (AP, Reuters)