But the Progress Party, while similar to its populist counterparts further south in Europe, isn’t quite the same. At its core a neoliberal economic party, it has never been nearly as far-right as the Front National in France or Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany, and has further worked to moderate its message and its rhetoric during its four years in government. In fact, experts who study these parties in Europe wouldn’t classify the Progress Party as a radical right-wing populist party, at least in the same sense that Le Pen’s Front National is—though it’s certainly true that the Progress Party has capitalized on nativist sentiment to help improve their vote share in recent years.

“It’s fair to say that the Progress Party in Norway is more of a moderate right-wing populist party than the Front National in France, for example, or even the Sweden Democrats [in Sweden],” Johannes Bergh, who runs the Norwegian National Election Studies at the Institute of Social Research in Oslo, told me. “They try to have more of a certain acceptable rhetoric when it comes to immigration—that has been sort of a conscious strategy for them. To get into government, they had to tone down the most extreme elements of their party.”

A big part of that comparatively moderate tone, Norwegian political experts told me, is the fact that the Progress Party was founded decades ago as a libertarian, anti-bureaucracy and anti-establishment party. For a long time, its primary message had more to do with economic issues than it did with immigration—though stricter immigration has been a part of the party’s platform since the 1980s, it is less of a one-issue party than other populist parties seeking electoral success further south.

“It has to do, essentially, with priorities,” Cas Mudde, an expert on European right-wing populist parties at the University of Georgia, told me. “Nativism isn’t really the core of their agenda, and they’re also still very neoliberal, which parties like the Front National of course are not.” Right-wing populism in Scandinavia is “very diverse,” Mudde added, referring not just to Norway’s Progress Party but to the Finns Party in Finland, the Sweden Democrats in Sweden, and the Danish People’s Party in Denmark. “Almost none of the parties is a really good, perfect fit for what we see as the prototype, such as Front National.”

Another part of the Progress Party’s relative success in 2017 has been, interestingly enough, the fact that it’s served four years in a governing coalition with Conservative Prime Minister Erna Solberg. Many populist parties struggle when they make the transition from opposition to governing—but experts here say the Progress Party has been more successful than most at toning down rhetoric and actually taking part in legislating. In the current government, it heads Norway’s Ministry for Migration and Integration, among other key ministerial positions; if the preliminary results hold, it’s likely to continue leading key ministries in Norway’s government. This has given the party an opportunity to take credit for recent government accomplishments.