Who is the current Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven and how long has he been in office?
With Sweden poised to go to the polls in a general election we look at the country's current Prime Minister Stefan Lofven and look at the chances of his Social Democrat party being re-elected
STEFAN Lofven has been Sweden’s Prime Minister since 2014 and is looking to be re-elected in the country’s upcoming general election.
He has been the leader of the country’s Social Democrats since 2012.
Who is the current Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven?
Lofven was born in July 1957 in Stockholm’s Aspudden district and placed in an orphanage when he was just 10 months old.
He was later looked after by a foster family in Sunnersta.
His foster father Ture Melander was initially a lumberjack before working in a factory while his foster mother, Iris, was a health visitor.
He became a member of the Social Democrats when he was 13 and was active in the party’s youth league.
Having completed his military service in the Swedish Air Force he started his career in 1978 as a welder where he became the union leader in two years.
Eventually he was elected vice-chairman of the Metalworkers’ Union in 2001 and four years later was elected as the first chairman of the newly-formed trade union IF Metall.
Shortly after becoming the chairman of the IF Metall union he was elected to the executive board of the Social Democrats in 2006.
In 2012 he succeeded Hakan Juholt as the party’s leader after he was nominated by the executive board.
He led the party in the September 2014 general election which resulted in a hung parliament with the party getting 31 percent of the vote.
The party formed a minority coalition government with the Green Party and Lofven was approved by the Riksdag as Prime Minister on October 3, 2014.
Lofven is a big sports fan and supports the ice hockey team Modo as well as the football clubs GIF Sundsvall and the English side Tottenham Hotspur.
He married his wife Ulla in 2003.
What are his chances in the next general election?
While the Social Democrats are expected to be the country’s single largest party, support overall for them is slowly being eroded.
In the 2014 election the party’s share of the vote was marginally up from30.7 percent to 31 percent but this was still the party’s second worst result in the country’s parliament – the Riksdag – since 1921 when universal suffrage was introduced.
In a recent poll carried out by research company SIFO the centre-left bloc of the Social Democrats, the Left Party and Greens gained the largest support with 40.6 percent while the centre-right were not far behind on 39.8 percent.
most read in world news
But political observers are keeping a close eye on the far-right Sweden Democrats who could find themselves as kingmakers, holding the balance of power with 17.1 percent.
But with their policies focusing on areas like immigration regulations all the other parties have refused to work with the Sweden Democrats.
According to the SIFO poll, the Sweden Democrats are currently polling 17.1 percent.
If that poll was recreated in the actual vote that could create some serious problems forming a government and Lofven could see his grip on power severely weakened.