A recent poll conducted by Opinion for ABC Nyheter and Altinget shows that 40 per cent of respondents would have voted yes to Norwegian EU membership, compared with 30 per cent in August.

At the same time, the number of people who would have voted no to the EU has dropped from 56 per cent to 49 per cent, reports Nettavisen.

The poll showing the sharp increase for the Yes side comes after a wave of propaganda against Donald Trump has characterised Western European media in the two weeks since his relationship with Volodymyr Zelensky soured.

The online newspaper uses the director of the publicly funded Fridtjof Nansen Institute, well-known anti-Trump activist Iver B. Neumann, to give his analysis of the recent increase in the number of EU supporters:

Norway needs to join the EU in order to withstand potential threats from the US and Russia, Neumann argues, suggesting that the two countries are currently equivalent threats – a familiar refrain from old and discredited conspiracy theories about Trump and Russia.

Aside from the media and the NGO apparatus, there are also politicians who want to use Trump as a scare tactic to turn Norwegians into EU supporters:

– Oslo Labour Party believes that Norway is best served by being a member of the EU. We will also take this statement with us to the national convention and the discussion of the Labour Party’s programme for the next period,” says Frode Jacobsen to FriFagbevegelse.

Jacobsen uses code words so as not to scare off the American president:

He goes on to say that, at the moment, the most important things are getting the trade war under control, the threat of tariff walls and the defence of democracy, among other things.

The online newspaper weaves two negative articles about Trump into the story about Opinion’s poll, and even runs a poll in the article. It shows a narrow “no” majority of 51-49.