On September 11, Norwegian voters go to the polls for parliamentary elections. For a long time it looked as though the center-left, led by the Labor Party, would take over government after four years of right-wing rule. However, in the last phase of the campaign the race is much closer, and a lot depends on which of the smaller parties get over the electoral threshold of 4 percent — the ones on the right or the ones on the left.

Still most polls are showing that the conservative coalition will have to step down and be replaced by a Labor-led government, supported by either the Greens, the Christian Democrats, the Farmers Party, the Socialist Left Party, the Red Party, or some combination of those.

For many in Norway, such a development would be relief after the last four years of tax cuts for the rich and attacks on the country’s still extensive labor protections. Those policies have been married to a clamp down on immigration and Islamophobic rhetoric.