SWEDEN - September 14, 2014 - GUIDE and THREAD

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

In 2014, Swedish citizens will flock to the polls to vote in the European election in May and parliamentary, regional, and local elections in September.  

As the last days of 2013 is quickly passing by, I thought I'd let myself be inspired by Antonio's great election guide to the Italian general election, and do a similar thing for Sweden.

Mostly I'll be focusing on the General Parliamentary election but side glances towards the other elections might happen as well. (If people have an interest of knowing more about local elections)

This thread should also serve as a place to discus the elections and ask questions to me, or other people with insight into Swedish politics.  

So, where are we at?  

The 2014 election will be a show-down between the incumbent centre-right government called the Alliance and left-wing opposition dominated by the Social Democrats.

Polls currently point towards a left-wing victory, but the Alliance showed at the last election that they're capable of reducing and over-taking big leads.

The 2010 election ended with a hung parliament, with no-one being able to form a majority government. The current government has relied on occasionally making deals with the Social Democrats or the Greens and passive support from the nationalist Sweden Democrats.

The general election will take place on the 14th of September.



    

[Franzl]

Looking forward to hearing more

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

THE MAJOR PARTIES:

The Left Party (V)



Founded: 1917
Leader: Jonas Sjöstedt

The Left Party is the party of the Swedish hard-left and the modern incarnation of the former Swedish Communist Party. They run on a platform of higher taxes for the middle- and upper-class, feminism with affirmative action, a strong welfare state, and stimulation of the economy through government spending. They’re against Swedish participation in the EU, and want to ban all forms of private healthcare and private education.

Historically they’ve acted as passive support for Social Democratic governments and as a left-wing guard dog in parliament but never participated as an official coalition partner in a government as they’ve been seen as too radical by the Social Democratic leadership.

They’re most strong in the historically left-wing North of Sweden, as well as among poor academics and students in urban areas.   

The Social Democratic Worker’s Party (S or SAP)



Founded: 1889
Leader: Stefan Löfvén

The Social Democrats are a big-tent labour party and the natural party of government having dominated Swedish politics since the late 1920’s and being in opposition only for 9 years from 1939 to 2006. Although they’ve always remained a centre-left party they have often taken a pragmatic and centrist approach to governing and often worked over the aisle with its centre-right opponents.

Today it’s a rather standard Social Democratic party that advocates the importance of economic responsibility as well as a strong welfare state.

Their support is strongest among public sector employees, unionized manufacturing workers, and among immigrants.

The Environmental Party - The Greens (MP)


 
Founded: 1981
Co-leaders: Gustav Fridolin & Åsa Romson

The Greens are an environmentalist and social-progressive party that entered parliament in 1988 due to an environmental debate following the great seal death of the period. For most of its early existence it was seen as a one-issue party but has since branded out to most other issues.

The party naturally advocates for such policies as a ban on nuclear power, more and better public transport and rail road infrastructure, higher taxes on carbondioxide, strict environmental regulations, a six-hour workday instead of eight, and so on.

Their base is students and young voters, as well as educated (mostly female) middle-class voters in the big cities.     
 
The Centre Party (C)



Founded: 1910
Leader: Annie Lööf

The Centre Party, originally known as the Farmer League, got started back in 1910 when a group of political farmers joined in a call to unite the Swedish farmers politically. In its early days the party was a rather conservative and pragmatic and shunned the notion of ideological utopias. Through the years it developed a more centrist and social-liberal touch while still remaining pragmatic, working over the aisle with the Social Democrats, sometimes even forming coalitions with them.

Today the party is ideologically divided, and it’s a bit hard to put down your finger on what they really want, but decentralisation, less bureaucracy and regulation for small business, thriving rural communities, and support of wolf hunting seem to be things we can all agree on in the party.

The party’s base is naturally still farmers and small business but in recent elections they've also found support among some libertarian voters in Stockholm.
 
The People’s Party – The Liberals (FP)



Founded: 1934
Leader: Jan Björklund

The People’s Party is the other social liberal centrist party in parliament and has a history of political ambiguity. It was created in 1934 when Evangelical temperance supporters merged with urban academic classic liberals.   

Through its history it has been everything from socially liberal to conservative. The issues which makes the party stick out from the rest of the centre-right today are their hawkish foreign and military policy, their strong focus on education and reform of the school system, and their undying love and support for the EU and the Eurozone, as well as their recent and unfortunate willingness to pander to xenophobia when election day rolls closer.

The party’s base consists of urban and suburban academic white-collar workers and recently military personnel.     

The Christian Democrats (KD)



Founded: 1964
Leader: Göran Hägglund

A small Conservative party based around traditional Christian values. It was founded in 1964 as a protest movement against the secularisation of Swedish society and more specifically the issue of Christian faith and history being removed as a subject in schools.

The party holds standard right-wing positions on economics, while having conservative views on social issues, such as strong opposition to abortion, support of traditional nuclear families, opposition to same-sex marriage and gay adoption rights, temperance, and believing that faith and Christian morals should be a cornerstone of modern society.

Most of their supporters are either evangelicals or seniors.

The Moderate Coalition Party (M) 


 
Founded: 1904
Leader: Fredrik Reinfeldt

Despite their name, the Liberal-Conservative Moderates have historically been the most right-wing party in Sweden and has been the largest centre-right party for the last three decades. In the last decade they have taken inspiration from Tony Blair and re-branded themselves as the New Moderates, a more centrist, modern and caring party and competent and responsible government managers.

Their main political questions are fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, efficient and less government spending, law and order, and job creation.

They have their strongest support among business owners, private sector white-collar workers, and law-enforcement.       

The Sweden Democrats (SD)   
     


Founded: 1988
Leader: Jimmie Åkesson

The Sweden Democrats are a social-conservative, nationalist party with a strongly populist streak. They have their roots in the openly racist movement Keep Sweden Swedish but have since 1995 slowly transformed itself into a more respectable anti-immigration party. Never the less they are still shunned as potential partners by the other political parties.

Their core issues according to themselves are, besides immigration, law and order, elder care, and opposition to the European Union, and say they want to create a free nation state with traditional Swedish culture and moral values. The party doesn’t (openly) support any ideas about ethnic or racial superiority however, but are strongly critical of the Islam as a religion.

The party’s base is among the Southern rural and small-town working class.   

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

MINOR PARTIES:

There are several minor parties but these ones are the ones of some importance.
(National parties that holds at least more than one seat in the European parliament or regional/local assemblies)

The Pirate Party (PP)

The Swedish Pirates was the first and original Pirate Party that inspired similar parties across Europe. They are a two-issue party that focus on copy-right law and opposition to a big brother society. They don’t take sides on the economic scale and active members are split in a Libertarian faction and a left-wing progressive faction. Due to a perfect storm of circumstances they managed to win two of the Swedish seats in the European Parliament but haven’t had much political success since.   

Feminist Initiative (F!)

A feminist party founded by former Left Party leader and political icon Gudrun Schyman after she was forced to leave her former party in disgrace. Originally seemed to have potential to be a political force, but the party’s fortunes quickly dwindled after controversial statements from members such as “All men are pigs!” and “Women who sleep with men are traitors of their gender!” and the party soon turned into a caricature of feminists and has only won a few seats in the local elections of Schyman’s hometown.     

Swedish Pensioners’ Interest Party (SPI)

They’re pretty self-explanatory, a party for senior citizens focusing on elder care and pensions. They’re mostly centrist and populist. They hold seats in a handful of regional and local councils where they most often cooperate with the centre-right.

The National Democrats (ND)

A party founded by former Sweden Democrats, who were thrown-out of their former party for being too extremist. The party advocates white-supremacy, a ban on foreign culture and are strongly against homosexuality. In difference to the Sweden Democrats, who can boast of having increased their voting share every election since their founding, the National Democrats have lost voters every election since their creation. They do however still hold a few seats on local councils.

[Tender Branson]

Looking forward to hearing more

This ...

It's always good to have a Super Election Year (we only have the EU and Vbg. elections the next year).

...

A first question to you: It seems the Swedish economy is now also slowing down considerably along with the rest of the EU countries (only slight growth anymore in Q3 vs. Q3 2012).

Percent change same quarter, previous year (q 1994- )



http://www.scb.se/en_/Finding-statistics/Statistics-by-subject-area/National-Accounts/National-Accounts/National-Accounts-quarterly-and-annual-estimates/Aktuell-Pong/22918/219315

How does a cooling economy impact the chances of the Alliance winning the election, when they are already down considerably in the polls ? Is there still a way to "come from behind" on popular policies that are not related to the weakening economy ?

And what are the opposition Left Block's most likely chances to still screw up an election win ?

Thx and I'm looking forward to more of this thread ...

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

THE PM CANDIDATES


THE PRIME MINISTER
Fredrik Reinfeldt (M)



Fredrik Reinfeldt has been Prime Minister of Sweden since 2006, after leading his party to a historic election victory, taking the Moderates from their greatest loss in modern times to one of their greatest successes. He leads a centre-right coalition known as Alliance for Sweden, or more commonly just The Alliance, consisting of the Moderates, the People’s Party, the Centre Party, and the Christian Democrats.    

Reinfeldt mostly grew up in suburban and exurban Stockholm, though his family also lived in London for a few years. His parents were both business consultants. He started to get involved in politics at 18, and was an active and influential member of the Moderate Youth League for many years. He was elected to parliament only 26-years-old in 1991, and the year after that he was elected leader of the Moderate Youth League.

Back in his early career Reinfeldt was seen as a radical neoliberal, and authored the controversial book “The Sleeping People.” This and his constant criticism of the party leadership lead to a huge conflict with the main party that resulted in him being excluded from powerful positions for half a decade. But once he was allowed to became Chairman of Parliament’s Judicial Committee, he quickly advanced in the party.

Following the Moderates’ catastrophic electoral defeat in 2002, Reinfeldt was made leader of the party. Despite his political past he chose to take his party towards the middle, making them more liberal on social issues and more centrist on economic issues. Inspired by Tony Blair, he dubbed his new reformed party “The New Moderates”.

As Prime Minister he’s been seen as calm and competent, but also often accused of being stiff and cold. He’s never been very good with public speeches, but is seen as a good debater. He has high trust numbers with the Swedish people, after what most people see as a skilled handling of the financial crisis. However many also see him as out of ideas resting too much on his past record with no future visions of how to make the country better.          


THE LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION
Stefan Löfvén (S)



Stefan Löfvén is the political rookie chosen to bring down the Alliance after his two unpopular predecessors failed. After the fast and scandalous fall of Håkan Juholt in early 2012 he was singled out as the captain to save the sinking Social Democratic ship.

Löfvén grew up as a foster child in a small village in the rural parts of Northern Sweden. His foster father was an industrial worker and his foster mother a health visitor. For many years Löfvén worked as a welder while at the same time being involved with his union and local Social Democratic politics. In 1995 he was hired by the Swedish Steel Workers’ Union full time and started to climb the career ladder getting more important positions over the years until 2005 when he was elected President of the Steel Workers’ Union.  

In his new position as leader of one of Sweden’s most powerful unions he was also given access to the Social Democratic political elite, where his talent was duly noted and he was made a member of the party’s executive board. As President of his union he was seen as a pragmatic centrist who among other things disagreed with his party on nuclear power.

As a true worker with his roots deep in the unions, but with a centrist profile he was seen as an acceptable choice to take over as party leader by both the left-wing and right-wing factions of the party after Juholt had been forced to resign. He does however lack true political experience, never having hold a seat in parliament or had any position within a Social Democratic administration.

But he has shown political talent and with his genuine personality, competent record as a union leader, and background as an ordinary man he’s been able to win back lost ground for his party, and is in a strong position to be the next Prime Minister. However the question remains if he will hold up under the pressure of an election campaign.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

How does a cooling economy impact the chances of the Alliance winning the election, when they are already down considerably in the polls ? Is there still a way to "come from behind" on popular policies that are not related to the weakening economy ?

And what are the opposition Left Block's most likely chances to still screw up an election win ?

Thx and I'm looking forward to more of this thread ...

The economy is the one issue where the government has been strongest through-out the term so far, and the reason they managed to pull of a win in 2010. A worsening economy by the summer will be a fatal blow to the government most likely.

As for how the left might screw it up, well considering it's the left there are lots of potential scenarios.

There's still a lot of insecurity about which parties the Social Democrats would bring into the government if there was a left-wing victory. Last time their promise to put the Left party in the government is claimed to have scared off a lot of centrist moderate voters.

Taxes and some social policies will also decrease their lead closer to election day. Taxes really go with-out saying (The left proposing raised petrol taxes last time was the start of their slump) but their proposals on Affirmative action and split parental leave is also unpopular.

It probably won't be enough to do them in this time though. The question is though if they'll be able to get their own majority. If they don't, we'll have a very complicated political situation. 

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM:

Parliamentary elections in Sweden use the system of party-list proportional representation. Out of the 349 seats in parliament 310 are permanent seats divided between Sweden’s 29 constituencies based on population, with constituencies having between 37 and 2 seats.

These seats are then distributed based on constituency results using a modified version of the Sainte-Laguë method. The remaining 39 are so called evening-out seats which are distributed based on the national results to somewhat even out the constituency numbers. 
There are two separate thresholds. The famous 4% national one, which allows a party to win seats in all constituencies as well as evening-out seats, and the 12% threshold on the constituency level that allows you to win seats in that particular constituency even if you don’t pass 4% nationally.         

The party lists are semi-open and you can preference vote for one candidate on the list. Candidates that get preferences from at least 5% of the total number of the party’s voters are moved up to the top of the list in order of their number of preferences. 

To vote in a parliamentary election you need to be 18-years-old and a Swedish citizen, and people are automatically registered if they’re living in Sweden. All eligible voters are also allowed to stand as candidates. When you cast your vote you are required to show ID. 

[Tender Branson]

What are your thoughts on the Swedish Resistance Movement that's quite active in the recent weeks, attacking various anti-racism groups and smeared Nazi-symbols (or the Nordic equivalents of it) on public buildings ?

What are the main parties positions on this problem ? Also, will the SRM launch a party for the elections as well (or did they already ?), or are they already to some extent in the SD or ND ?

It seems in general that extremism is spreading in Sweden, as well as from the Far-Right (SD, ND and SRM) and also from extreme Leftists who are attacking the SD's "immigration stop" as well as SD politicians as well (they, the SD, are the only major party I think who propose an immigration stop, considering Sweden's pretty liberal immigration policy. Statistics show that Sweden's population is growing 90.000 this year, or 1%, of which 70.000 is coming from the immigration surplus).

Then there's also the violent segment of Swedish-born (or immigrant) Muslims heading to Syria to fight in the Civil War and then return to Sweden even more radicalized and traumatized (but this is a problem in many European countries).

Let's see how this turns out in the next 9 months.

[politicus]

The Left Party is the party of the Swedish hard-left and the modern incarnation of the former Swedish Communist Party. They run on a platform of higher taxes for the middle- and upper-class, feminism with affirmative action, a strong welfare state, and stimulation of the economy through government spending. They’re against Swedish participation in the EU, and want to ban all forms of private healthcare and private education.

Historically they’ve acted as passive support for Social Democratic governments and as a left-wing guard dog in parliament but never participated as an official coalition partner in a government as they’ve been seen as too radical by the Social Democratic leadership.

They’re most strong in the historically left-wing North of Sweden, as well as among poor academics and students in urban areas.   


The Greens are an environmentalist and social-progressive party that entered parliament in 1988 due to an environmental debate following the great seal death of the period. For most of its early existence it was seen as a one-issue party but has since branded out to most other issues.

The party naturally advocates for such policies as a ban on nuclear power, more and better public transport and rail road infrastructure, higher taxes on carbondioxide, strict environmental regulations, a six-hour workday instead of eight, and so on.

Their base is students and young voters, as well as educated (mostly female) middle-class voters in the big cities.     
 

Nice work! A couple of questions.

1. What are the most important positions where SAP view the Left Party as "too radical"?

2. The academics voting for the Danish Unity List are not especially poor (they mostly work in the public sector, so they make less than average for that reason, but not otherwise). So I got curious: When you say "poor" academics do you just mean "public sector" or are there a systematic tendency that succesful academics drop out of the Left Party?

3. If the Greens want a shorter workday are they going for a steady state/no growth economy where the workers will have to accept a lower standard of living (ie no compensation for the shorter work day and lower welfare because the tax base will be lower)  or are they in the populist mold of enviromentalism, where they just pretend public welfare and standard of living can go on at the same level?

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

What are your thoughts on the Swedish Resistance Movement that's quite active in the recent weeks, attacking various anti-racism groups and smeared Nazi-symbols (or the Nordic equivalents of it) on public buildings ?

What are the main parties positions on this problem ? Also, will the SRM launch a party for the elections as well (or did they already ?), or are they already to some extent in the SD or ND ?

It's actually not that new of a thing. Groups of Swedish neonazis were very violent and active during the 90's, as was the radical left being violent back towards the xenophobic groups. It calmed down a lot in the late 90's, and has not been that much of a problem for years, but have started a new in the last years.

It's quite clearly tied to the economic situation. Lots of unemployed angry youth looking for something to do and something to get their frustration out on. Unfortuantley the only way to contain the situation will probably be to see a better economy, as with many problems.

I think all the major parties (except SD) have condemmed the last periods violence, and there have been several marches against far-right violence which I'm almost sure all the left party leaders walked in.   

Swedish neonazis probably votes either for ND or SvP. SvP is another openly national socialist minor party. Some probably for SD as well, although most really radical people accuse SD of having sold out and become to politically correct. 

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Nice work! A couple of questions.

1. What are the most important positions where SAP view the Left Party as "too radical"?

2. The academics voting for the Danish Unity List are not especially poor (they mostly work in the public sector, so they make less than average for that reason, but not otherwise). So I got curious: When you say "poor" academics do you just mean "public sector" or are there a systematic tendency that succesful academics drop out of the Left Party?

3. If the Greens want a shorter workday are they going for a steady state/no growth economy where the workers will have to accept a lower standard of living (ie no compensation for the shorter work day and lower welfare because the tax base will be lower)  or are they in the populist mold of enviromentalism, where they just pretend public welfare and standard of living can go on at the same level?

Thank you.

1. A lot of it has to do with responsible economic governing. S think its important with balanced budgets while V wants to spend with-out thinking about how to finance the spending. But foreign policy is also a touchy subject, especially when it comes to the EU and America, as well as education.

EDIT: It should also be pointed out that pre-1989, the then Left Communist Party, had very close ties to the Eastern block, and a somewhat undemocratic view on democracy, which was the major problem back then. 

2. With poor academics I meant people with an education with-in the cultural field. People that've studied art and literatture and genus science and queer theory. (Stuff like that) A lot of them work in the public sector if employed at all, so you're partly right, but many of the better paid public employed academics tend to be Social Democrats instead.

3. The latter populist kind. According to them corporate profits will pay for it.   

[Tayya]

It should also be noted that the Greens have continually shifted towards pragmatism since the early noughties and focus very little on shorter workdays and guaranteed incomes, to the point that very few outside their base votes for them because of those issues. Otherwise, they would never have gotten double digit poll numbers.

[DC Al Fine]

Excellent stuff. One question: You said Reinfeldt took the Moderates from their worst defeat to one of their biggest successes. The defeat was the 2002 election I presume? There was a 7-8% swing from the Moderates to the Liberals. What happened?

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

How would the Swedish Chef vote?

[politicus]

How would the Swedish Chef vote?

He wouldn't be able to vote because he is actually a Norwegian.


http://www.thewire.com/entertainment/2012/08/everything-we-thought-we-knew-about-swedish-chef-was-wrong/56278/

[Tayya]

Excellent stuff. One question: You said Reinfeldt took the Moderates from their worst defeat to one of their biggest successes. The defeat was the 2002 election I presume? There was a 7-8% swing from the Moderates to the Liberals. What happened?

How to not suck at elections in Sweden:

1) Don't campaign on drastically lower taxes without being able to articulate why they are needed and that the social services won't be completely destroyed when most people are doing fine as is and there is a remarkably energetic Liberal Party showing initiative and shifting towards tough-on-immigration policies.

2) Don't have pretty much every foot soldier from your party interviewed with a hidden camera express racist views.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Excellent stuff. One question: You said Reinfeldt took the Moderates from their worst defeat to one of their biggest successes. The defeat was the 2002 election I presume? There was a 7-8% swing from the Moderates to the Liberals. What happened?

How to not suck at elections in Sweden:

1) Don't campaign on drastically lower taxes without being able to articulate why they are needed and that the social services won't be completely destroyed when most people are doing fine as is and there is a remarkably energetic Liberal Party showing initiative and shifting towards tough-on-immigration policies.

2) Don't have pretty much every foot soldier from your party interviewed with a hidden camera express racist views.

Basicly this, and the Moderate leader Bo Lundgren being a terrible terrible leader.

The Moderates ran a campaign that basicly was, we're gonna lower taxes a bunch with-out any plans on how to finance said tax-cuts, wheras the People's Party ran an offesive campaign with new ideas, such as being tougher on immigration.

The Christian Democrats and the Centre Party also ran decent campaigns, while the Social Democrats were soaring. There weren't much room for M to move but down.

Add to this Lundgren's impopularity. He was seen as an uncharismatic rich guy. Only 12% wanted to see him as PM. Devestating numbers. Both the People's Party leader and the Christian Democratic leader was openly aiming to take his place as leader of the right.


As for the racist scandal...  it's hotly debated if it did actually have any major effect. Personally I don't believe that people are going to be so offended by local politicians expressing racist views on hidden camera they go and vote for the party who's openly demanding a tougher immigration policy. And the Moderates were already going down in the polls when it happened. Although it might have had some effect by accelerating their fall by show-ing what an utter mess the party was in at the time .     

[DC Al Fine]

Excellent stuff. One question: You said Reinfeldt took the Moderates from their worst defeat to one of their biggest successes. The defeat was the 2002 election I presume? There was a 7-8% swing from the Moderates to the Liberals. What happened?

How to not suck at elections in Sweden:

1) Don't campaign on drastically lower taxes without being able to articulate why they are needed and that the social services won't be completely destroyed when most people are doing fine as is and there is a remarkably energetic Liberal Party showing initiative and shifting towards tough-on-immigration policies.

2) Don't have pretty much every foot soldier from your party interviewed with a hidden camera express racist views.

Basicly this, and the Moderate leader Bo Lundgren being a terrible terrible leader.

The Moderates ran a campaign that basicly was, we're gonna lower taxes a bunch with-out any plans on how to finance said tax-cuts, wheras the People's Party ran an offesive campaign with new ideas, such as being tougher on immigration.

The Christian Democrats and the Centre Party also ran decent campaigns, while the Social Democrats were soaring. There weren't much room for M to move but down.

Add to this Lundgren's impopularity. He was seen as an uncharismatic rich guy. Only 12% wanted to see him as PM. Devestating numbers. Both the People's Party leader and the Christian Democratic leader was openly aiming to take his place as leader of the right.


As for the racist scandal...  it's hotly debated if it did actually have any major effect. Personally I don't believe that people are going to be so offended by local politicians expressing racist views on hidden camera they go and vote for the party who's openly demanding a tougher immigration policy. And the Moderates were already going down in the polls when it happened. Although it might have had some effect by accelerating their fall by show-ing what an utter mess the party was in at the time .     

Yeah that would do it Thanks for the answer.

[Tayya]

For the record, I don't think the racist scandal had that much effect either, but it's a very symbolic icing on the cake that deserves to be mentioned.

Personally, I think Swedish politics could have become much more interesting in that election had the Moderates fallen behind the Liberals. What a waste.

[DL]

From what others have written above it sounds like there has been a bit of a role reversal in Sweden between the Moderaterna and the Folkpartiet. When I lived in Sweden in the 80s, the Moderates were a very rightwing party that was comparable to the UK Tories under Thatcher while the Folkpartiet claimed at the time to see itself as the Swedish equivalent of the SDP/Liberal Alliance and was very small "l" liberal and almost indistinguishable from the SAP and tended to get a lot of support from teachers etc...now it sounds like Moderates have moved to the centre while the Folkpartiet has swung wildly to the right with all this anti-immigrant rhetoric and a very militaristic foreign policy...interesting!

[Tayya]

Folkpartiet is just weird. It's hawkish, very pro-EU, pro-USA and pro-Israel. It's also for more traditional education politics, with more tests, earlier grades et cetera. At the same time it's probably the Alliance's strongest LGBT rights advocate and has a clear feminist/women's rights streak, which can be expected to become more prominent if groomed successor and Minister of EU Affairs Birgitta Ohlsson succeeds Jan Björklund which she is tipped to do. I like to compare them to Joe Lieberman. I wouldn't know how far they could go with being tough on immigration - they landed nowhere close to Geert Wilders or the Sweden Democrats, and their Youth League among others usually fought against them. Not to mention that they're culturally sworn enemies of the Sweden Democrats, being the urban center-right liberal's preferred party.

[Lurker]

From what others have written above it sounds like there has been a bit of a role reversal in Sweden between the Moderaterna and the Folkpartiet. When I lived in Sweden in the 80s, the Moderates were a very rightwing party that was comparable to the UK Tories under Thatcher while the Folkpartiet claimed at the time to see itself as the Swedish equivalent of the SDP/Liberal Alliance and was very small "l" liberal and almost indistinguishable from the SAP and tended to get a lot of support from teachers etc...now it sounds like Moderates have moved to the centre while the Folkpartiet has swung wildly to the right with all this anti-immigrant rhetoric and a very militaristic foreign policy...interesting!

The biggest change amongst the "borgerliga"/bourgeoisie parties have not been in Folkpartiet though - even if it is more right-wing now than has usually been the case. The change in Centerpartiet is even more noticeable, having gone in a few years from being a milquetoast, middle-of-the-road party, to one heavily influenced (and dominated?) by Thatcherites. This right-wing shift, started under the leadership of Maud Olofsson, lead to some  calling them "Mauderaterna".

 

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Approval numbers for the party leaders have been released by SIFO.

Aftonbladet/SIFO:
Fredrik Reinfeldt (Moderate) 56% (-7)
Stefan Löfven (Social Democrat) 55% (+9)
Gustav Fridolin (Green) 49% (+9)
Åsa Romson (Green) 29% (+7)
Jonas Sjöstedt (Left) 29% (+8)
Jan Björklund (Liberal) 28% (-4)
Göran Hägglund (Christian Democrat) 27% (-1)
Annie Lööf (Centre) 19% (+3)
Jimmie Åkesson (Sweden Democrat) 10% (-3)

All the left-wing leaders are getting a bump, while Reinfeldt, Björklund, and Åkesson lose.

Björklund, who is Minister of Education, probably because of the recent PISA evaluation that claimed the Swedish school system is doing horrible.

Åkesson might be an effect due to the recent Nazi violence.

[FredLindq]

There is absolutley no anti-imigration rethoric from Folkpartiet. The are ver liberal in these issuses almost pro free imigration.