Sweden Heads Into Close Election

Swedish opposition leader Fredrik Reinfeldt of the Moderate party speaks during his campaign rally Saturday Sept. 16, 2006 in Orebro, central Sweden. The general election will take place Sunday Sept. 17, 2006. (AP Photo/Scanpix Sweden/Dan Lindberg) (Dan Lindberg - AP)

Another potential problem for the Social Democrats is that their partners in the 349-seat Riksdag, the small Left and Green parties, are demanding Cabinet seats as a condition for keeping Persson in power.

Reinfeldt hopes wavering voters will ultimately opt for the alliance because it presents a clear alternative _ a coalition government including Moderates, Christian Democrats, the Center Party and the Liberal Party _ while the makeup of a new leftist government remains unclear.

Smaller parties such as the Feminist Initiative or the far-right Sweden Democrats will be hard-pressed to reach the 4 percent threshold needed to enter parliament, polls show.

The Sweden Democrats have grown to about 3 percent in some polls even though they have largely been left out of political debates before the election because of their anti-immigration views.

Twelve percent of Sweden's 9.1 million residents are foreign-born, with many recent arrivals from the Balkans, Iraq and former Soviet republics.

Despite concerns that many immigrants are failing to integrate into Swedish society, anti-immigration sentiment has not surfaced to the extent seen in other European countries, including Denmark and the Netherlands.

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Associated Press Writer Katarina Kratovac in Stockholm contributed to this report.