**Norwegians are to vote in what is expected to be a closely fought poll between the prime minister’s Labour Party and the centre-right opposition.**Jens Stoltenberg, in power since 2005, has emphasised his success in guiding Norway through the economic crisis.
The world’s fifth biggest exporter of crude oil experienced only a brief recession and has Europe’s lowest unemployment rate.
His main challenger is Siv Jensen who leads the right-wing Progress Party.
She has campaigned on a platform of lower taxes and tightening immigration. Currently, more than 10% of Norway’s population is of foreign origin with the largest groups of asylum seekers coming from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Eritrea.
Norwegians - who pay some of the highest taxes on the planet - have high demands of their public services and often complain about long hospital waiting lists for non-emergency operations and bad roads.
But in a debate on Sunday, Mr Stoltenberg said voters could not expect a “social-democratic paradise”.
Ms Jensen hit back saying: “I believe you won’t build a social-democratic paradise by Tuesday because you’ve been at it since the war and you still haven’t managed it.”
The Progress Party has pledged to spend more of the country’s vast oil wealth at home and to broaden privatisation in both the health and education sectors.
But analysts say it is unlikely that her party would be in a position to govern even if centre-right parties won a majority of the votes because of a lack of unity between them.