Swedish Election Results with Google Street View and maps

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Just had an idea that I'd teach you all a bit  about Swedish politics and political geography through Google Street View and some home made maps from the 2010 election.

First topic is Malmö. Sweden's third largest city with an approximate population of 300 000. Malmö is Sweden's, if not Scandinavia's most segregated city with some really strange and diverse voting across the city.


The Boroughs of Malmö



The largest party in each precint, General Election 2010 (Blue=Moderates, Red=Social Democrats, Lime=Greens)


You have some really wealthy traditional buorgious and right-voting inner-city areas ala Stockholm in the north- and west-central parts of the city. A good example of this area Davidshall precint. Here the centre-right Alliance gathered 65,4% of the vote (M;44,8 C;5,9 FP;10,4 KD;4,3) against the centre-left's 27,6% (S;11,8 V;5,4 MP;10,4) and the Sweden Democrats' 4,5%.

The southern part of the inner-city is however much different. While still expensive, this area is the gathering point of students, hipsters, and BoBos. The Greens and the Left Party does really well here. A typical example would be the precint Möllevången-Folkets Park Here you have the centre-left dominating with 75,0% of the votes (S;25,0 V;22,6 MP;27,4) against only 17,7% for the Alliance (M;10,7 C;1,9 FP;3,9 KD;1,2) and 2,3% for the Sweden Democrats. The Greens are the largest party.

East of the inner-city you have an area known as Rosengård. Infamous in Sweden as the suppossebly worst neighberhood in the country. The area has a very high number of Muslims, and an overwhelming majority non-ethnic Swedes. Unemployment is the double of even Spain, and poverty is rapid. For those football-fans, Zlatan Ibrahimovic was born and raised in Rosengård. Unsurprisingly the borough is dominated by the Social Democrats and they have their best precint in the whole country here, Herrgården Here the centre-left captured 92,8% of the vote (S;87,5 V;4,6 MP;0,7) against 5,5% for the Alliance (M;3,7 C;0,2 FP;0,9 KD;0,9) and 0,9% for the Sweden Democrats.

Intrestingly though, Rosengård is also home to the Sweden Democrats' best precint, Almgården located right next to Herrgården. (Personally I find it very ironic that the Social Democrats and the Sweden Democrats respective best precints in the whole country are next to eachother) Almgården is almost as poor as the rest of Rosengård, but a lot more ethnicly Swedish. The Sweden Democrats got 30,0% of the votes. The centre-left still had them beaten though at 47,8% (S;38,8 V;5,5 MP;3,5) and 19,0% for the Alliance (M;16,0 C;0,3 FP;2,0 KD;0,7)

The actual-city also includes the bouroughs of Hyllie, Fosie, and Kirseberg. Hyllie and Fosie are traditional working-class areas and today has a rather large immigrant population, Kirseberg is more tradiotinally lower middle-class and ethnic-Swedish. All three lean left, but not by huge margins and the right does reasonbly well there. I don't find them that intresting, so I'm not gonna dwell on them more.

Within the boarders of Malmö Municipality, but not belonging to the city proper, you also have the suburbs of Limhamn-Bunkeflo and Husie, as well as the small exurb of Oxie.

Husie is solidlly centre-right, but just like in Hyllie, Fosie, and Kirseberg, the other side doesn't do too bad either, and just like those places it's completly unintrsting to me.

Now Limhamn-Bunkeflo on the other hand isn't just sollidly centre-right... it's one of the most right-wing places in the country. Here you find Nya Bellevue where the Alliance recived 91,5% of the vote (M;65,3 C;6,6 FP;10,3 KD;9,3) against 5,4% for the centre-left (S;2,1 V;0,5 MP;2,8) and 2,5% for the Sweden Democrats.

The exurb of Oxie is probably the most normal, swing-area in the municipality. The northern part of town is right-wing, the southern left-wing. The side that ends up winning over-all in Malmö will usually win Oxie. 

If you have any questions, just ask. Something you'd like me to take up next, come with suggestions. Oppinions?
 
 

[Platypus]

Great idea, and very interesting. I learnt more about Malmo than I every planned to

Maybe do a few more spots around Skane before heading upwards?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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That's not ironic. It's quite obvious what that is.

[Kitteh]

This is extremely fascinating. Thank you.

The one thing that stands out to me is V's extremely weak performance in the poor and immigrant areas. These are usually some of the best areas for left-wing parties in Europe (like RESPECT in Bradford and east London, the PCF in Seine-St-Denis, etc). That's true in some other Scandinavian countries too, I think (IIRC the red-greens won some Muslim areas of Copenhagen). So it amazes me that V did better in Davidshall than Herrgarden. This map makes it seem like V has a very different set of voters than other similar parties (more hipster than working class). Is this true?

No ideas where to go next, but keep it up!

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

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Quite likley, that's the area of my expertese after all.

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It's a bit complicated actually. Nowadays V's strongest support group is as you guessed among students, college-educated youth with low salery (teachers, nurses, journalists) and BoBo-voters, but they also still have large support among the working-class in Northern and Middle Sweden.

I think the best way to explain why they're not huge among immigrants, is simply that there has been no reasons for immigrants to move away from the Social Democrats. For example in Denmark where you're correct in that immigrants support the far-left in greater numbers than here, their Social Democrats have become more anti-immigration during the last decade. Similarly in the UK, Muslims shifting from Labour to Respect had to do with Labour's foreign policy towards the middle east under Blair. In Sweden however there hasn't been any similar shifts in policy from the Social Democrats that would make immigrants less inclined to vote for them.

Not to mention, me saying that V doesn't have much support among immigrants is also a bit of an over-simplification. It's true in many areas, but there's also a few precints where it's  not true. I know in minority-majority Kista in Stockholm there's a precint where V got around 15% in support. So it's a tricky question. But I hope I explained it a bit.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Asian politics in Bradford has very little to do with left/right or whatever.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The Malmö stuff is great.

[Serenity Now]

This is really interesting.  I like the use of linking to Google streetview, very innovative method for making electoral geography feel more 'real.'  It's funny how the places kind of look how I'd expected them to, despite having very little knowledge of Sweden as a place..

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Thanks for the positive feedback guys.

A new installment will arrive soon. The topic: There's no place like home - Lund