Populist Right Smells Power in Norway's First post-Breivik Poll

Norway votes Monday in polls likely to oust Labor Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and give right-wing anti-immigration populists a seat in government just two years after extreme rightist Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people.

With a few days to go before the first general election since the July 22, 2011 massacre, polls point to a victory for Erna Solberg's Conservative Party, setting the stage for a coalition with the Progress Party, which once counted Breivik among its members.

"Something extraordinary would have to happen to prevent a change of government," said Bernt Aardal, a political scientist at the University of Oslo. "Something never seen before in a Norwegian election."

According to polls, the Progress Party is the third largest party after Stoltenberg's Labor and the Conservatives, making its cooperation essential for a center-right coalition that will also need the support of two small centrist parties, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals.

"We will not support a government in which we do not ourselves take part," warned Siv Jensen, leader of the Progress Party.

Kept from power ever since it was formed 40 years ago, the Progress Party has gained a measure of respectability over time, even if it still retains the ability to make some voters cringe.

It unequivocally denounced Breivik, who claimed to be fighting multiculturalism and a "Muslim invasion", and has also toned down its rhetoric on "sneak Islamization", but even so, it remains an advocate of very restrictive immigration policies.

Those are issues on which the two center parties have very different views, facing 52-year-old Solberg with the probable post-election challenge of having to reconcile the nearly irreconcilable.

The four center-right parties agree on mainly one thing: They want an end to the leftist policies pursued by the Labor Party during eight years in power.

But they have yet to decide which of them should be in the new government, and what policies that government should pursue -- two questions that will be decided only when the relative weight of their parties' votes is known next week.

At this stage, the most likely scenario seems to be the formation of a minority government including the Conservatives and Progress Party, with the two centrist parties offering support in parliament.

"Norway needs a new course," said Solberg, focusing mainly on health, education, taxation and transportation.

Meanwhile, the coalition led by incumbent Stoltenberg, which has governed Norway over two terms since 2005, is a victim of power fatigue.

On paper, at least, all the stars would seem to be aligned for a third term.

Norway has a flourishing economy underpinned by strong oil revenues, while its five million people enjoy the highest living standard in the world and are virtually shielded from unemployment.

The Norwegian state also controls the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, which is valued at close to $750 billion (568 billion euros), the result of skillful management of its ample petro-money over the years.

"Things are going well in Norway, but people are tired of having the same leaders," said Johannes Bergh, a researcher at the Institute for Social Research in Oslo. "Eight years of uninterrupted power is unusual in Norway."

Stoltenberg, 54, rode on a huge wave of sympathy immediately after Breivik's attacks, but he has since been weakened by critical failures in the state apparatus exposed by the tragedy.

On July 22, 2011, Breivik inflicted an indelible trauma on the peaceful Nordic country when he detonated a bomb near government headquarters and then opened fire on a gathering of Labor's youth wing on Utoeya island.

An official investigation later found that the attacks could have been prevented and that Breivik could have been stopped earlier, had the authorities implemented security measures which had already been decided years earlier.

But Utoeya has generally remained taboo in the campaign, even though some of the survivors are candidates in Monday's election.

Even without Breivik on the agenda, most commentators believe the vote is a done deal, and that the small, wealthy democracy is destined for a shift to the right.