(Sweden) THIS ELECTION has been CANCELLED. Next departure in 2018.

[emcee0]

Just an interesting realization that if in the case the Moderate Party did form government again would mean that Denmark, Norway and Sweden would all have a female as their Prime Minister.

[ingemann]

Just an interesting realization that if in the case the Moderate Party did form government again would mean that Denmark, Norway and Sweden would all have a female as their Prime Minister.

Yes it's time that Sweden end their hostility toward women and join the other Scandinavian countries in the 21th century.

[Colbert]

Just an interesting realization that if in the case the Moderate Party did form government again would mean that Denmark, Norway and Sweden would all have a female as their Prime Minister.

Yes it's time that Sweden end their hostility toward women and join the other Scandinavian countries in the 21th century.

Clearly, this would resolve all problems of unemployment or immigration in Sweden...

[Boston Bread]

This looks like it's going to be a train-wreck. Hopefully red-greens run a good campaign and put the blame where it belongs.

[politicus]

Just an interesting realization that if in the case the Moderate Party did form government again would mean that Denmark, Norway and Sweden would all have a female as their Prime Minister.

Yes it's time that Sweden end their hostility toward women and join the other Scandinavian countries in the 21th century.

It is mildly amusing that Sweden of all places will be the last Nordic country to get a female head of government, even if the two they have had in Finland only were in office for 14 Months combined, but then they had Red Tarja as President so that kinda weighs it up. Even the Faroe Islands have had one, all though also just for 14 Months.

[politicus]

Well, it's less amusing when you consider that Anna Lindh would almost certainly have been Prime Minister if she wasn't murdered.

[Gustaf]

Anna Kinberg Batra has been officially nominated as new M-leader. Obviously just a formality by now.

Löfven said they will campaign for a change in government. Amusing misstep. He also called SD neo-fascist but then failed to define fascism when asked about it (he rambled something about how fascists respect democracy).

In Skåne, amusingly, the Red-Greens faced a similar problem as nationally but solved it by voting for the SD budget.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Poll from Sverige tycker.

Who do you want to see as Prime Minister after the elections:

37% - Stefan Löfvén (S)
28% - Anna Kinberg Batra (M)
11% - Annie Lööf (C)
  8% - Jimmie Åkesson (SD)
  6% - Jonas Sjöstedt (V)
  3% - Gustav Fridolin (MP) / Jan Björklund (FP)
  2% - Göran Hägglund (KD)
>1% - Åsa Romsson (MP) / Mattias Karlsson (SD)

There are so many amusing things with this poll. Too bad it's from a polling firm I've never ever heard of before.

Anyway if we ponder that it is indeed correct, the number of people who wants the next government lead by a left-wing Prime Minister, and the ones who wants a Prime Minister from the Alliance, is almost equal.     

Hopefully red-greens run a good campaign and put the blame where it belongs.

They can try, but so far the indicators seem to be that they're not so good at pinning the blame on their opponents.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Sverige tycker has now also released a traditional opinion poll:

V - 4,2%
S - 31,0%
MP- 5,8%

Government + supporters = 41,1%

M - 26,9%
C - 7,4%
FP - 4,8%
KD - 4,3%

Alliance = 43,4%

SD -14,0%

Others (including FI) - 1,6% (chuckles)

 

[Nortexius]

If you put together the most recent polls from Demoskop, Yougov, Sentio and Sverigetycker/Inizio you get this result:

V - 5,1%
S - 29,4%
MP- 7,0%

Government + supporters = 41,5%

M - 25,2%
C - 6,2%
FP - 4,8%
KD - 4,1%

Alliance = 40,3%

SD -15,7%

Others (including FI) - 2,6%

The liberal FP seems to be going the same way as the german FDP while the Center Party under the leadership of Annie Lööf have a strong momentum. C and M will be the winners in the Alliance while KD and FP will be lucky to remain above the 4% threshold. The numbers for the greens seem to be stable but my guess is that a lot of voters from V, MP and FI will be wandering of to S soon. SD will be the big winners of this election so their gamble with voting down the governments budget seems to have paid of for now.

[politicus]

my guess is that a lot of voters from V, MP and FI will be wandering of to S soon. SD will be the big winners of this election so their gamble with voting down the governments budget seems to have paid of for now.

How come? It could bring V in danger if true.

[RodPresident]

 

my guess is that a lot of voters from V, MP and FI will be wandering of to S soon. SD will be the big winners of this election so their gamble with voting down the governments budget seems to have paid of for now.

How come? It could bring V in danger if true.

I remember Netherlands, where  VVD and PVDA polarized election enough to get  majority to do a great coalition.
Wouldn't be wise for one of Alliance parties to leave it and run independently?

[politicus]

my guess is that a lot of voters from V, MP and FI will be wandering of to S soon. SD will be the big winners of this election so their gamble with voting down the governments budget seems to have paid of for now.

How come? It could bring V in danger if true.

I remember Netherlands, where  VVD and PVDA polarized election enough to get  majority to do a great coalition.
Wouldn't be wise for one of Alliance parties to leave it and run independently?

A. What does that have to do with my question/comment? (or did you just quote it by accident?

B. Not sure what you mean. Do you mean "Wouldn't it be wise for one of Alliance parties to leave it and run independently?

- that wouldn't really give them an advantage. They are four independent parties - just committed to cooperation. If one party left the Alliance it would make it a risky bid for bourgeois voters (might make a deal with SAP) and cost them support.

[Nortexius]

No Alliance party is willing to break the Alliance in it's current form. Hypothetically FP could choose Birgitta Olsson as party leader and move more to the left or KD could choose Ebba Busch Thor and move in a more conservative direction (and thereby get a whole lot more support in the polls) but the thing is any breakup of the Alliance would basically mean a chance for the Social Democrats to reestablish the political hegemony over Sweden that they have had for the last 30-40 years.  Nobody in the blue bloc wants to be responsible for giving the Social Democrats that position again which is why you've seen Annie Lööf and co in the Center Party rejecting all forms of cooperation with Löfven. If the Center Party or the Liberals agree to cooperate with the Social Democrats in any issue without the rest of the Alliance being in on the deal it would basically undo these last 8 years of non-socialist rule.

[Wake Me Up When The Hard Border Ends]

This will be interesting to watch... I'm not terribly familiar with Swedish politics, but I'll still be eager to see what parties will form government post-election.

[Nortexius]

First poll done by phone since new elections declared confirms my theory that Greens, leftists and feminists are flocking to the Social Democrats for a more stable government. SDs increase in Yougov and Sentio seems to be confirmed by Novus while Liberal FP (ALDE) and Christian Democrats (EPP) are in danger of losing representation in parliament by missing the 4% threshold for parliamentary seats. A result giving only 2 Alliance parties parliamentary representation would send shockwaves through Swedens political system.

Novus December (Comparison to last election results):

S: 32,0 (+1,0)
MP: 6,0 (-0,9)
V: 5,3 (-0,4)

Redgreens: 43,3 (-0,3)

M: 23,7 (+0,4)
FP: 4,3 (-1,1)
C: 6,6 (+0,5)
KD: 3,9 (-0,7)

Alliance: 38,5 (-0,9)

SD: 16,0 (+3,1)

Others: 2,8 (-1,9)

[Antonio the Sixth]

And when I left the forum I thought things couldn't possibly get worse politically around the world...

[YL]

It seems like the Sweden Democrats may have a bit of an anti-Semitism problem:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/17/swedish-far-right-leader-jews-swedes

From the article:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

So being anti-Sami and anti-Kurd as well makes it OK then?  Or is he being misrepresented?

[politicus]

It seems like the Sweden Democrats may have a bit of an anti-Semitism problem:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/17/swedish-far-right-leader-jews-swedes

From the article:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

So being anti-Sami and anti-Kurd as well makes it OK then?  Or is he being misrepresented?

Not sure how much it will hurt them. Basically he is just saying that Jews/Sami/Kurds can have Swedish nationality, but can not be ethnically Swedish unless they assimilate. I know many Sami would agree to this distinction between ethnicity and nationality. Its touchy for the Jewish community for obvious reasons, but I think most SD voters already have an ethnic Swede/citizen Swede distinction. Scandinavian languages don't have a terminology to distinguish between nationality and the ethnicity of the majority population. In Denmark we sometimes discuss if we can create a new word for ethnic Danes like Danlænder etc. (I would prefer Daner, the original tribal name), but it just sounds awkward and artificial.

[politicus]

"Söder had said in a newspaper interview it would be a problem if there were too many people in Sweden “who belong to other nations” and had non-Swedish identities. Paying immigrants to go home would also help to avoid “foreign enclaves” and instead “create a society with a common identity”, he said."

This is more problematic, but his potential voters would support ethnic homogeneity as long as it was culturally defined and not biologically (there aren't that many actual racists in Sweden). It could get problematic for them if he mixed fully accepted minorities like Jews and Sami into those "of other Nations", but I doubt he actuallly did that.

[Nortexius]

What Björn Söder was actually saying was that SD has 3 definitions of being "swedish":

1: A person with swedish citizenship which anyone in the world can acquire just by getting a residence permit and living in Sweden for 5 years. A somali who barely speaks any Swedish and considers Swedish culture, norms and values to be alien would be under this category.

2. Being a person with ethnic Swedish background

3. Being a culturally Swedish person (A non-ethic Swede who has assimilated into swedish society) and left behind the culture of his homeland to fully embrace the swedish language, culture, values and cultural norms.

The Sweden Democrats goal is to strongly decrease the 1st category by stopping immigration from nonwestern countries, encourage immigrants to assimilate into swedish society, offering incentives for non-assimilated swedish citizens to go back to their homelands and strongly discourage multicultural policies.

According to Björn Söder Swedens 5 historical minorities (jews,sami, swedish roma, finns, tornedal finns) would be exempt from demands for assimilation and would be allowed to keep their culture and heritage.

All of this of course has not been discussed at all in Sweden, instead most of the discussion has been around the fact that the liberal newspaper Dagens Nyheter has twisted Björn Söders statement so that people think that the main jist of his argument is that Jews and Sami aren't swedes (and therefore not good people) when the actual main point of his argument was the fact that immigrants needed to start to conform more to swedish society. So most of the discussion for the last 2 days has been about the fact that Björn Söder is an evil nazi who hates jews and sami.

[politicus]

In Finland Finländare means the all people living in Finland and Finska meaning Finnish-speaking Finns. I thought you would have plethora of words explaining complicated relationship between subject and Queen. How you call people in realm of Danmark (Greenland, Holstein, Virgin Island etc.)

There isn't and has never been a common name for neither the subjects of the old Oldenburg conglomerate monarchy, nor the modern Community of the Realm.

Generally subjects of conglomerate states didn't have common names, there were no Habsburgians etc.

[Nortexius]

Some people have asked me i think the greens will decrease in this election and here's my theory:


My main argument why MP (The Greens) will probably go back in the elections is because a lot of the problems the Löfven-government have been having in government is because the Greens have had a very disproportional amount of power. The Greens have been demanding the closure of nuclear power plants, Bromma airport, new building of a very important motorway in Stockholm (förbifart Stockholm) and have blocked any attempt by the Social Democrats to limit labour migration which the unions have wanted for a long time. There have been a lot of scandals surrounding Green ministers such as Åsa Romson painting her boat with poisonous paint, Mehmet Kaplan comparing swedish ISIS-fighters to Swedes who volunteered to defend Finland against the soviets during WW2 and so on.

Charismatic former Social Democrat prime minister Göran Persson was interviewed in a lengthy interview on SVT where he destroyed the Greens completely and called their policies "pubescent trophy politics" and said that the problem with trophy politics is that it can easily be conquered by opponents and that the Greens were dragging his party down. The Greens are usually overrepresented in polls and if you combine that with the fact that a lot of the next election will probably be about who is most competent to govern in such a precarious situation i see realistic green voters migrating to the party most capable of governing within the red bloc.

Early signs of this phenomena can already be seen in the recent Novus-poll. The Greens unlike the Social Democrats are not a rich party who have support from the unions. A second election so close to the last one will deplete their coffers completely and if you combine that with the loss of idealism and anti-establishment credentials that comes from being a government party, things are not looking bright for the Swedish greens.

[politicus]

Charismatic former Social Democrat prime minister Göran Persson

LOL

[Nortexius]

Charismatic former Social Democrat prime minister Göran Persson

LOL

Don't deny your love for Göran!