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

[politicus]

Damn, I posted a thread literally seconds after this one.

I suppose this year must have been like heaven for political junkies in Sweden.

Its only fair that the Sweden thread is created by a Swede (or Scanian..).

Its an awful long campaign, who is that most likely to benefit? I guess the centre-right has the most cash, but SAP is probably better funded than most SD parties.

[politicus]

Just checked the election calendar, it turns out this Riksdag thing will collide with the very exciting and totally wide open presidential election in Uzbekistan! Very inconsiderate...

[politicus]

I wonder what they will do if the result is status quo  - i.e. Red-Green Bloc larger than Alliance, but Sweden Democrats holding balance of power again. Suppose they can't call another early election.

The Swedish pols would be under hard pressure to try a Grand Coalition if the outcome is status quo.

This will be the first such election in 57 years - really saying something about how dramatic this is. Feeling slightly bitter that Norway is the only country in Europe (I've heard) where an early election is constitutionally impossible...

I believe you share that honour with Moldova, but it's a shame you can't join the Sweden Finland, Denmark, Åland, Faroe Islands 2015 elections bonanza.

[politicus]

Will Reinfeldt be leading the Moderates in this election?

Nope, Anna Kinberg Batra will be elected as their new leader in January, and she has already unofficially taken over after Reinfeldt.

Her background sounds upper class/upper middle class. Is that going to be a problem? How posh is she?

[politicus]

Ipsos for Dagens Nyheter:

Share of voters who believe they will vote for the same party in the new election

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Not looking good for the Christian Democrats, who only just passed the threshold at the last election. Perhaps many of their loan voters from last time is considering to change their vote this time. The same is to a lesser extent true for the (Liberal) People's Party. The threshold is 4%, KD got 4.57% and FP 5.42% at the last election.

The article doesn't provide numbers for all the parties, but it says that the Sweden Democrats is the party with the biggest potential to increase its share of the votes. 3/10 of the Alliance voters who consider changing party, is considering to vote for SD, while the same is the case for 2/10 of the red-green voters who consider changing their vote.

http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/kd-ligger-samst-till-infor-nyvalet/

I would be shocked if either of the Alliance parties did not cross the threshold. If they hover around it, they are always "saved" by supporters of the other three parties.

This may not hold if two of them are in trouble at the same time. If we are looking at a big swing to SD, as the numbers Diouf posted suggest, we could be in uncharted territory.

[politicus]

I doubt it will happen, though if SD significantly increases its vote share then there is a chance, yes. Though I wonder what SD's ceiling is - I would have thought (or hoped) that they're pretty close to it by now. They've already almost polled as well as DF's best Folketing result, and DF doesn't have the baggage of SD.

Well, DF is polling at 21% now..

(not that I think it necessarily makes sense to compare Denmark and Sweden in this context)

[politicus]

* Some 26% of Swedes polled by DN/Ipsos want next government to be led by the Social Democrats and to consist of parties from both political blocs.
* 40% say some kind of cooperation across blocs good for Sweden
* Only 2% of surveyed voters would like current government constellation with Social Democrats and Green Party
* 19% want Alliance government, led by Moderate Party
* Some 20% of voters want next government to cooperate with Sweden Democrats
* DN/Ipsos polled 1,006 Swedish voters online Dec. 3-4

Seems like SD's ceiling could be up to 20%.

Your reference of it is a bit selective..

14% wants S, V and MP, so the combined support for a leftist government is 16%. Which is still very low of course, but roughly the same as the 19% for an Alliance government,

Twice as many voters want an S led Grand Coalition (26%) as an M led Grand Coalition (14%).

10% says "Other", which is most likely people hoping for an Alliance + SD government, since that is the option not polled, but that is a guess.

No less than 15% don't know.

So basically more voters still want an S led coalition (42%), than an M led (33%), which is after all good news for SAP, but that is provided the rump 10% are not mainly SD supporters.

Regarding the Blame Game:

35% blame the government for the crisis
24% SD
17% Alliance
10% Other (which is a LOL option in this context, though it may be the big bad media)
14% Dunno

So this is bad news for SAP, but very good (and a bit undeserved IMO) news for the Alliance.

[politicus]

Though presumably polls at this stage are almost meaningless? This seems like the sort of election in which the campaign will be critical.

I think the blame poll is the most important, it sets the stage and reveals that it is going to be an uphill battle for SAP to sell their narrative of the crisis.  The second most important is the preferred government poll with a plurality for a Grand Coalition. It confirms that Swedes remain consensus seekers and that going on the attack will likely backfire.

The actual polling numbers for the parties at this point are much less interesting.

[politicus]

Latest Yougov poll (first after the new elections called) shows the Sweden Democrats on 17,7%.

S  29,6 (+0,1)
MP  6,9 (-1,1)
V   4,7 (-2,1)
FI 2,5 (-2,5)

RedGreen bloc: 41,2

M  23,1 (+1,9)
C   5,7 (-0,7)
FP  5,0 (-1,2)
KD  4,2 (-1,6)

Alliance bloc: 38,0

SD 17,7 (+6,6)

Welcome to the forum.

[politicus]

Thanks for poll figures. On those numbers, it is interesting that:
1. SAP + SD have almost half of all effective votes. Any majority must include either SAP or SD, because of V, but they don't have one alone.
2. SAP + MP need at least three smaller parties for a majority, be it V or Alliance.
3. M + SD would need at least two Alliance parties.

Can I get a sense from Swedes or Scandinavians... first, is SD anywhere near ready for government, and second, are the larger parties anywhere near ready to be supported by SD?

The answer to both questions is no.

[politicus]

To elaborate a bit:

The leader of the Moderates in Scania has been positive towards cooperation with SD, but Scania is more anti-immigration than the rest of Sweden. There are apparently a handfull of Moderate MPs that are privately positive about it (when asked anonymously), but it is still a very marginal position and there is no reason to believe this will change in the near future (though it may in the long run if SD remains a factor).

[politicus]

Latest Yougov poll (first after the new elections called) shows the Sweden Democrats on 17,7%.

S  29,6 (+0,1)
MP  6,9 (-1,1)
V   4,7 (-2,1)
FI 2,5 (-2,5)

RedGreen bloc: 41,2

M  23,1 (+1,9)
C   5,7 (-0,7)
FP  5,0 (-1,2)
KD  4,2 (-1,6)

Alliance bloc: 38,0

SD 17,7 (+6,6)

What are the number is parentheses supposed to indicate (since they don't show the difference with the election results)?

Its the difference to the last YouGov poll.

[politicus]

Yeah. Even outsiders want to be in government or to influence the government, especially if no-one else is adopting their ideas and trying to steal their supporters away. It is hard to get one's agenda implemented outside government, given the tendency of modern party systems to concentrate power, due to EU inter-governmentalism and higher demands for public transparency in politics. The point of doing well in elections is not just to maintain purity and do well in future elections.

I can see why the extent of compromise or toxicity might be too much for either side to bear right now. The Danish People's Party achieved a lot because it was willing to support governments, and vice versa. It sounds like Swedish politics (at least at elite level) is not yet ready to deal with the more infamous SD. Still, without them, the options are now grand coalitions or five-party alliances.

The most likely development IMO is that SD-Moderate cooperation on the local level will over time make it more legit and natural to cooperate on the national level.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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:

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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.

[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.

[politicus]

Charismatic former Social Democrat prime minister Göran Persson

LOL

[politicus]

According to Expressen the election is called off after the government and the Alliance have agreed on a budget. Press briefing at 10.30 am local time today (in half an hour).

http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/klart-det-blir-inget-extra-val/

[politicus]

And it is confirmed by Stefan Löfven. What an anticlimax.

http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/lofven-bekraftar-det-blir-inget-extra-val/

[politicus]

Strong far-right party, utterly hapless Social Democrats, chronic ungovernability and snap elections... It's official: Sweden has now turned into Denmark.

Denmark is far from ungovernable and besides the 2007 election we haven't had a genuinely early election since 1990. 1994, 1998, 2001, 2005, 2011 and the coming one in 2015 were/are all basically full term elections with the PM sometimes trying to take advantage of a situation and calling it half a year early.

[politicus]

I was shocked when the early elections were called. I was even more shocked when they were called off. But this is a relief for 7 out of 9 parties, so we should be happy.

Apart from SD which one is the second non-relieved party? V?