Swedish Election to Swing more on Style than Substance

The two men vying to become Sweden's next leader Sunday may not be far off politically, but in personal style they are a world apart.

Incumbent Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt of the center-right Moderates is a gifted speaker and consummate manager, whose polished, suave exterior is sometimes interpreted as aloofness.

His stocky challenger, Stefan Loefven of the Social Democratic Party, benefits from a good-hearted guy-next-door image that goes down well in this egalitarian-minded country of almost ten million.

If sports metaphors were to be used, Reinfeldt might be a fencer and Loefven a boxer.

Many now consider 49-year-old Reinfeldt's four-party conservative alliance as tired after eight years of extensive liberal economic reforms that the left says have widened the gap between rich and poor.

His coalition looks all but set to cede power to Social Democratic candidate Loefven, 57, and his allies from the Left and the Green party, with polls putting the Red-Green parties in the lead just days ahead of the election.

Loefven, Sweden's most likely next prime minister, is a former welder who honed his leadership skills as a workers' representative.

"Stefan Loefven's leadership style from his years as a metal workers union leader has informed his time as a party leader: no sweeping gestures, no hasty moves, no wobbly promises," Peter Wolodarski, chief editor at leading daily Dagens Nyheter, wrote in an op-ed piece.

Despite being a member of the Social Democratic party's executive committee since 2005, he has never held a central government post -- a lack of experience his detractors, not least Prime Minister Reinfeldt, have used against him.

While serving as the head of the powerful IF Metall trade union in 2012, Loefven was elected the Social Democratic leader, with a mission to revive Sweden's once-dominant party, whose popularity had fallen to record lows.

Polls predict only a modest swing, but Loefven seems set to become prime minister, with the support of the Green Party and the former communist Left Party.

A fan of rock music and ice hockey, Loefven was adopted and grew up in a working-class family in a small town in northern Sweden. He is married without children.

At an early age he became politically inspired by the Social Democratic icon Olof Palme, tragically assassinated in 1986.

Loefven has been criticized for his shortcomings as a speaker, although defeats in TV debates against more silver-tongued opponents are said sometimes to earn him sympathy with the public.

After two terms of right-wing tax cuts and privatizations, he has promised to reverse growing income gaps and strengthen Sweden's cherished cradle-to-grave welfare system.

But he has occupied the midfield politically on thorny issues like profit-making by private companies in tax-funded health care and education, which he has promised to limit but not ban, as his likely allies in the Left Party demand.

A similar center-leaning and practical strategy worked twice for Reinfeldt, a career politician who toned down his right-wing image to sway voters in a country where conservative governments have been an exception over the last century.

The tall football fan, who for all his sophisticated trappings is fond of occasional hot dogs, climbed to power with the message that he supported real workers, as opposed to what he said was the left's focus on people living on benefits.

That twist on traditional right-left lines worked, and in the 2006 and 2010 general elections, Reinfeldt obtained the best results for his Moderate Party since the 1920s.

He became party leader in 2003, following disastrous results for the Moderates in the 2002 election.

Born and raised in Stockholm, where he earned an economics degree, the divorced father of three counts among his main achievements that Sweden was largely spared the global financial crisis and that more than 300,000 new jobs have been created during his time in office.