Swedish election, 2018: Political Impasse, Löfven loses confidence vote

[EPG]

What's the rationale for lending support to Kd versus trying to consolidate Kd support into the other Alliance parties? Does Kd attract a different element of society that may not vote for M or L?

[EPG]

I assume many of those 3% who currently support Kd would support Alliance parties if Kd is excluded - I'm wondering whether this is true. Are Kd important enough in some regions to survive with no national representation, or would their supporters transfer to non-Alliance parties, or would they stay home? I assume the answer is one of those three, but I don't know which.

(Edit: I've thought of a fourth possible reason. Maybe there are tactical advantages for M to a conservative party in the alliance, balancing the two liberal parties. I had thought there would be a clear tactical advantage to having a three-party instead of four-party coalition, but thinking about the lessons of game theory between two blocs, I'm no longer so sure.)

[EPG]

I can't see it swinging many votes though, there are like what, 6 people in the whole of Sweden who even know what a European Parliamentary group is?

Everyone who knows the difference between ECR, EFDD and ENF writes on here.

[EPG]

Agreed, that's the rhetoric - but the main ECR party is the only party ever to call an EU exit referendum and now almost fully supports EU exit. It's a matter of time and circumstance. PiS probably couldn't conceivably call and win an EU exit referendum, the circumstances aren't there in Poland, but Sweden Democrats could.

[EPG]

Agreed, that's the rhetoric - but the main ECR party is the only party ever to call an EU exit referendum and now almost fully supports EU exit. It's a matter of time and circumstance. PiS probably couldn't conceivably call and win an EU exit referendum, the circumstances aren't there in Poland, but Sweden Democrats could.

You don't know what you are talking about. The vast majority of the Swedes do not want to leave the EU, and neither do SD. If SD were to support Swexit and made this an important campaign theme, they would lose a lot of votes compared to the current polls.

Whatever, some people said the same about the UK. It's not likely but it might happen in Sweden, not tomorrow yes, not most likely to leave next yes, but it's foolish to exclude EU exits. It is a net payer, it has a lot of voters with baseline ideological hostility to the EU, and it gains relatively little from the common monetary policy or common foreign policy. Most importantly, trust in the EU and its institutions is low compared to national institutions. Sweden is a pretty good country and in a clash between a SD national government and the EU, people would take both sides. Whereas in Poland it's not likely and it won't happen - people would overthrow the government before leaving the EU.

[EPG]

The question's been asked before. Elswhere, it happens where incomes in the cities are much higher, or where there are very significant ethnic / linguistic regional divides.

[EPG]

I would speculate that Stockholm would keep voting a bit more "right" than the rest of Sweden as long as the "right" consists of parties like the Moderates and Liberals who accept the small "l" liberal consensus among elite opinion (in other words as long as they are the Swedish equivalent of pro-EU Tories in the UK). If we get to a point where the parties of the right in Sweden start to become socially conservative and xenophobic and populist and Eurosceptic etc... then it could create a whole new cleavage and I wonder who would then start to win in Stockholm?

If the Moderates took that path, the Liberals would by definition be the main beneficiaries, it seems to me.

...and if the main cleavage in Swedish politics moved from traditional left/right to more of an open/closed polarization...at what point would the Liberals and possibly the Centre Party split from the Moderates and there would be more of a shift towards a SAP/L/C centre left government that would isolate the SDs and Moderates

It's still a couple of months away?

[EPG]

After the debate, the post-debate host at SVT, Martina Nord said that Jimmie Åkesson had been "blatantly stereotyping" in his remarks on immigration, and that SVT, the state broadcaster, dissociates itself from those remarks. This is completely crazy. That a state broadcaster actively attacks one party straight after the most important debate of the campaign. Crazy. Atleast SD doesn't need to worry about a campaign point and attention for the last hours of the campaign.

When you broadcast words, you have some responsibility for them.

"Maybe the ex-Nazis have a good point."

[EPG]

I don't see how anyone could support a party that still harbours lots of neo-Nazis, unless they have no problem with anti-Semitism. Evidence is that when these kind of people get into power, anti-Semitic rhetoric like Soros derangement becomes mainstream.

[EPG]

Can everyone please behave? Keep the crassness to your various other Online haunts.

Too late. There is another thread about Brazil where the far-lefts and the far-rights are justifying murdering each other. I would say this whole enterprise is beyond saveable.

[EPG]

Forum relative to Sweden:
M -9; C -4; KD -4; SAP -3; L -2

MP & FI same

SD +12; V +8; Other (mainly extreme right) +2

Red +5
Blue -19
Extreme right +14

Forum would have elected a SD+V Weimar majority

[EPG]

I would say more that it was a tense election about future & leadership, where it was considered too costly to risk a protest vote for small parties like Feminist Initiative.

[EPG]

I would guess this forum is most missing women, people with children and families, and retired people. Those are pretty big demographics in European elections.

[EPG]

Maybe another election would answer that question by skipping ahead to the punishment part.

[EPG]

Maybe another election would answer that question by skipping ahead to the punishment part.

I think maybe we just skip the government part completely. Worked well enough for Belgium that one time. No government that can raise taxes, no government that can have weird IT-related scandals, no government that is dependent on either the radical left or the radical right. Sounds pretty good to me to be honest.

There is no legal time limit on how long the Speaker can wait before using his four tries to get a Prime Minister approved. Why not use the fourth and last try in the summer of 2222.

It's a good argument. If the Allianse or M-KD cared enough about changing policies, they would deal with the SD. But they don't want to. So maybe there is no majority for any change in policies, and that is fine.

[EPG]

If anyone can solve the political situation in a clever way without a new election, your suggestions: __________ . No, telling everyone else except SD to support your favourite party doesn't count, nice as you may find a C-L minority government to be.

[EPG]

Yes, the problem in Sweden is not that people need to take a course of action but cannot agree on a government.
It's that nobody really wants to take a course of action enough to pay the price of government.
Maybe Löfven shadow government is not the worst outcome, then. For how long can this last?

If anyone can solve the political situation in a clever way without a new election, your suggestions: __________ . No, telling everyone else except SD to support your favourite party doesn't count, nice as you may find a C-L minority government to be.

I think, there are perhaps 3 government options possible.
A M-KD government that in some way convinces both SD and C/L not to vote against it.
A S-C-L-MP government that convinces V not to vote against it. Perhaps with Lööf as PM and Löfven resigning to make it palatable for the centre-right parties (which of course would make it more difficult for red-green parties to accept).
A S-M government.

But not sure whether they are more likely than new elections.

So we are coming close to the most credible outcomes being:
1. New election;
2. Prime Minister Annie Lööf