The latest Swedish Television (SVT) 'Voter Index', which produces an average aggregate poll from all the main existing polls – puts the country's two main parties, the centre-left Social Democrats and centre-right Moderates, neck-and-neck as they enter the electoral end-game.
Underpinning this dead heat is a statistical tug-of-war that has been taking place since the last election in September 2006.
Government bounces back
Following its ground-breaking victory that year – only the second time in 70 years that the forces of the centre-right had wrestled power from the dominant Social Democrats - the Alliance government has fallen well behind the red-green opposition in the polls.
Indeed, early 2008 polls showed the three opposition parties leading the government by a huge margin of 20 percentage points. Since then, however, this lead has reversed, boosted in part by the government's solid performance at the helm of the EU from July to December 2009.
In recent weeks, polls have shown that the government is marginally in the lead. So close are the two parties – the Alliance is on 47.8% and the red-greens are on 46.6% - that polling experts told leading newspaper Dagens Nyheter that "this election is far from decided. Anything can happen between now and 19 September".
A first female PM?
Arguably the most interesting political story centres on the leader of the Social Democrats, Mona Sahlin. Sweden, which has one of the most aggressively egalitarian societies in the world and one of the highest proportions of female elected representatives, has never had a female leader.
However, as noted by the Fondation Robert Schuman's European Elections Monitor, Sahlin is still not very popular among Swedes, and in fact "faces strong competition" from Maria Wetterstrand, the extremely popular Green spokesperson, to become the main female 'face' of the centre-left.
Conversely, the Moderates led by Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who have chosen the motto 'Framåt tillsammans' (Forwards together), enjoy a high level of popularity, but this was achieved to the detriment of the other three Alliance parties.
