Swedish election 2010

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Sweden seems to have done very well with having the Social Democrats in power for what? 70 out of the last 80 years?? and every time the "bourgeois parties" have governed all it has led to has been chaos and soaring deficits.

That statement is utterly ridiculous and idiotic.

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Sweden seems to have done very well with having the Social Democrats in power for what? 70 out of the last 80 years?? and every time the "bourgeois parties" have governed all it has led to has been chaos and soaring deficits.

That statement is utterly ridiculous and idiotic.

Yeah, obviously Sweden has been completely ruined by Social Democratic rule. Every day you hear those items on the news about mobs gone crazy looting Stockholm's inner city.

Come on. Scandinavia is practically an advert for Social Democracy.

Too bad I never suggested that. The idea that the Swedish right in government has brought chaos and deficits is utterly ridiculous and idiotic.

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...as far as the election itself goes, it'd be useful if someone posted poll numbers here.

This is probably the poll being referred to:

M 30.6
FpL 9
KD 5.4
C 4.2
Right 49.2
S 33.8
GRN 8.8
Vp 4.8
Left 47.4
SD 2.1

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Too bad I never suggested that. The idea that the Swedish right in government has brought chaos and deficits is utterly ridiculous and idiotic.

Let's take a trip down memory lane. The two times the rightwing parties have governed in Sweden were 1976-1982 - total flop - governments collapsing over and over, high inflation, soaring deficits, recession. Then Swedes came to their senses and brought back the SD in 1982 and then all was well again. Then in 1991-1994, people decided to experiment with the right again under Carl Bildt - again chaotic government, soaring inflation, deficits, recession etc... and Bildt was crushed in 1994 when he ran for re-election.

And under Reinfeldt? Certainly he turned it into a Scandinavian Greece, no?

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Inner-city areas in France are very wealthy and used to be very right-wing. Now most, if not all, of these old bourgeois areas, are held by the left and vote for the left regularly. European cities aren't as universally left-leaning as they are in the US.

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Is Stockholm similar to Paris or Sao Paulo in that the city itself is wealthy and the working-class lives in the proletarian hinterland surrounding the city, or is there at all an history of major industrialization and working-class politics in the Stockholm region at all?

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What do people think about my earlier comment about how the "bourgeois" parties have not fallen for the kind of populist socially conservative rhetoric that rightwing parties in other countries have adopted which tends to turn off urban voters.

It certainly is quite correct for Sweden as well as the US, but it isn't in France. The cities moved to the left in France partly as a result of the gentrification of the PS which started in 1981. It became less of a deathly scary red dragon, abandoned its old rural electoral machines and wasn't extremely socialistic once in power. Furthemore, the electorate of the inner core of many cities (but not all) also changed from old bourgeois to the bobo type. In Paris, the left also gained ground rapidly in the 90s with Chirac's gradual departure from local politics and the emergence of political scandals in the Parisian RPR. But, Paris is not a right-wing city.

The UMP won the inner city areas of Rennes in 2010 (and by a fair margin as well), and they still do extremely well in the bourgeois enclaves of Marseille, Lyon and Paris. The UMP lost Brest Centre in 2008, and the UMP still holds most of its urban cantons in the inner cores of various cities. Though Marseille and Le Havre are extremely class stratified, leading to more pronounced and durable antagonisms.

Saying that French urban voters were turned off by "populist social conservative" rhetoric is almost entirely false.

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their core are often old working class voters that want big government and statism

Fremskrittspartiet voters as a rule don't want 'big government' or 'statism'. Opposition to high taxes and big spending is one of the party's hallmark...

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but London, Paris and New York are not exactly cheap and they tend to vote to the left of the countries they are in.

In Paris, as I said before, it's the bobo vote. "The wallet on the right, the heart on the left".

You know the answer to why New York's Upper East Side isn't a GOP stronghold.

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Isn't it more accurate to describe people as "immigrants" rather than as non-white. There are relatively few Africans or east Asians in Sweden who are genuinely "non-white" - but there are a lot of immigrants from southern Europe and the Middle east who are all White in that they are Caucasian.

It's a minor wedge question of phonetics and political views. It's irrelevant.

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I was told, from inside sources, that it was either prostitute or child pornography the day before the news broke. But it happened so late that it had no time to become a story (I went home early this morning).

I think the Reinfeldt strategy is brilliant, and Göran Hägglund (kd) attacked the left for their promise to give 12 billion more to welfare pretty effectively.

What "left"? The choice is only between centrist new liberalism or rightwing neoliberalism in any Western capitalist society. I'll say one thing about Sweden, and indeed, the entire Nordic model, at least, they actually pay "living" benefits, which is more than can be said for the UK and even, here, mass welfare dependency is just another consequence of the "cult of neoliberalism". Relatively little reliance on it during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s

You're like a broken record...

It's only the 600th time he's used his token phrase "cult of neoliberalism".

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That sounds EXACTLY like the profile of Front National supporters in France. Peoploe wioth working class roots but with low levels of education and who are often shop keepers and tradespeople etc...

No, not necessarily.

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SAP vote actually increases in Norrbotten.

Second election in a row too iirc.

M seems slightly down in Stockholm, perhaps some of their younger voters voting Green this time?

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In Landskrona, where SD had won like 22% in the local elections in 2006, they've fallen to 15.7% and lost 4 seats. FP seems to be the largest benefactor of that.

And in the Riksdag vote, SD won 10% there.

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And Feminist Initiative got local seats in Simrishamn, the home of the party leader, with almost 10% of the local vote.

Given than the women's right are well-avanced in Sweden, I suppose than this is an radical and extremist party?

I think they want to abolish marriage or something.

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Any idea as to why M lost votes in their strongholds? Who benefited from that? FP?

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and got almost no support elsewhere.

That's not so.

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Yeah, I will do that at some point as well. At some point will also do a map of Stockholm (and a few other cities, not sure which) at the very low level. Fwiw, if anyone has any requests for areas they'd like maps done of, I'm happy to oblige; Sweden is a very interesting country.

Lower-level maps of Gotland and Malmo would be interesting.