Immigration Restrictionist Party Gains in Norway Polls

by Kenneth Schmidt

Sylvi Listhaug

Kenneth Schmidt reports that Norway’s liberal-leaning Progress Party, now leading in polls, is gaining support with its firm immigration stance amid dissatisfaction with the Labour government.

A party that wants to restrict immigration is gaining ground in the polls in Norway. The Progress Party, in a poll taken by Norstat in mid-December, places the party in first place in a crowded field. The Progress Party is leading with 27.7% of the vote, followed by the Conservative Party with 20.7%. In the rear is the Labour Party, traditionally Norway’s biggest with 16.8%. Nine other polls since mid-November, by five different polling firms, show similar results to these.

Progress is advocating for strict ID procedures, refusing more asylum applications and making deportations easier. They also want to make stricter rules for permanent residency and family reunification. “Obviously groundless” asylum claims will be rejected and people who lie to border officials will be rejected.

The Progress Party was founded in 1973 by a man named Anders Lange as an anti-tax protest party. In the late 70s, the party came to be led by Carl Hagen, who pushed the party in a more anti-immigration direction. Ever since Hagen’s leadership, the party has been rent by divisions between classical liberals/libertarians and those advocating for more controls on immigration. For a time in the early 90s, the libertarians gained the upper hand and the anti-immigration positions were removed from the party platform. By the mid-90s, the immigration restrictionists gained the upper hand. By 2010, the more national-conservative wing gained more power. The party is currently led by a lady named Sylvi Listhaug, a schoolteacher who took power in 2021 and is tougher on immigration.

Still, the Progress Party is a very mixed bag of liberals who don’t mind the anti-immigration plank and a small national-conservative faction. The good news is that the Progress Party has been in coalition governments with the Conservative Party in several governments (2013-2021). If they win in the September 8th, 2025 elections, it is unlikely that there will be a “cordon sanitaire” to isolate them from power since the conservatives were happy to coalition with them in the past. One of the reasons the Progress Party is gaining in the polls is that the current prime minister, Jonas Støre of the Labour Party, is seen as a weak leader and that three ministers in his government have been caught in scandals and forced to resign.

The Progress Party can’t be called nationalist or even national-conservative. It’s just a liberal party with an immigration control position and quite a moderate one at that. As far as I can tell, there are three tiny nationalist parties — Alliance, Norwegian People’s Party and Vigrid — but thus far they haven’t stirred up any voter interest.