Personally, I think that Reinfeldt's realignment is partly overstated - many Swedes were still closer to the Social Democrats, but were disillusioned by the Persson cabinet, didn't want to vote for Sahlin or the Left Party and detested the idea of Håkan Juholt as Prime Minister. Meanwhile, Reinfeldt's and his cabinet's general competence kept the government alive, well and stable. When the incumbents had a credible opposition, they couldn't come up with new ideas and started to lose control of the situation, especially thanks to the minor parties becoming increasingly irrelevant. At the same time, a couple of events (a pseudo-scandal concerning a private elderly care provider and a disastrous PISA score) brought an increasing sense of malaise, especially as unemployment is still very high (above 8%).
Fredrik Reinfeldt and Anders Borg aren't enough anymore to counter all these factors working against them. Their last chance is the presentation of the spring budget and shadow budgets in May, which also hosts the EP election. If they still trail by over 10% in the summer, it's very hard to see how they can win.
What would happen then? That's for another post.
Typically, unemployment above 8% suffices to bring down any government. Dare to elaborate a bit more on the economic situation?
Thanks for this highly informative post. I am looking forward to the next one!
