Talk Elections

With the new year fast approaching and bringing with it an election year for Sweden I thought that now would be as good of a time as any to start a thread for it.

It's been an eventful term to say the least, with neither of the two blocs in Swedish politics, the Red-Greens and the Alliance, having a majority in parliament. The Alliance had ran on a policy in the 2010 and 14 elections which stipulated that whichever bloc could gather the largest minority in parliament should be allowed to form government by the smaller bloc in order to lock out the far-right Sweden Democrats from power. In 2014 they had also promised to present a joint budget no matter if they lost the election as a way of showing unity. Staying true to his words, Fredrik Reinfeldt resigned as Prime Minister after the election and the Alliance parties abstained on the vote for Prime Minister in parliament afterwards, allowing Stefan Löfven to form government.

However a crisis soon emerged as the Sweden Democrats broke with parliamentary procedure during the budget vote in December. After their own shadow budget had been voted down they did not abstain on subsequent votes as is convention, but instead voted for the joint Alliance shadow budget, meaning that the budget that the Social Democratic-Green government had negotiated with the Left Party fell. With the Alliance parties refusing to re-negotiate the budget with the government, Prime Minister Löfven announced that he would call a snap election for March. However as it was only constitutionally possible to do so on the 29th of December it left some room between the announcement and when the official decision would be taken. As the parties looked at the polls, which only seemed to show the Sweden Democrats gaining and the Christian Democrats perilously close to the 4% threshold, the Alliance parties entered into quiet negotiations with the government, and on the 27th the December Agreement was presented.

The December Agreement made official the policy which the Alliance parties had ran on in the election; the largest minority of parties should be allowed to form government by the smaller bloc abstaining on the vote for Prime Minister, and also be allowed to pass its budget by the smaller bloc either abstaining or the various parties presenting separate budgets which wouldn't get more votes than the government's even together with the Sweden Democrats.

As anyone with half a brain should be able to tell, this didn't exactly endear the Alliance parties to their conservative base and only helped the Sweden Democrats in the polls as they could portray it as an establishment stitch-up and themselves as the only credible opposition party. Discontent grew during 2015, especially in the Moderates and the Christian Democrats, and the whole thing fell apart in the autumn as the Christian Democratic conference voted to leave the agreement, with Moderate leader Anna Kinberg Batra being quick to announce that if one Alliance party left the agreement it meant that all parties would do so. However even with the agreement officially gone the Alliance parties still continued to present separate shadow budgets, meaning that the government's budget could get through either way. Seemingly the only big difference after the agreement fell is that the Social Democrats are no longer bound to let an Alliance government and budget through if they get more support than the Red-Greens in the 2018 election.

After that whole mess politics have just carried on. In the wake of the 2015 refugee crisis migration policy was tightened down to the EU's minimum level, issues like law and order got increased focus, while a more prominent left-right conflict has reemerged as the Alliance parties moved rightward on issues like wages and worker's rights and the Social Democrats have moved to the left on welfare and economic issues. A leak in the Transport Agency this year lead to the resignation of two cabinet members after the Alliance threatened a vote of no confidence, however the Social Democrats could almost still be said to have come out as winners in that debacle as the Alliance made the strategic error of also calling for a confidence vote in Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist. Hultqvist only being peripherally involved with the scandal and well respected in defence circles, meant that Löfven was willing to put up a fight to keep him in the cabinet. Eventually the Alliance parties were forced to withdraw their no-confidence vote, which only made them look less competent.

A stronger economy and shrinking unemployment has also benefitted the government in the past year.

Here's rundown of the parties, with the latest polling average from pollofpolls.se (http://pollofpolls.se) included. ()=change from last year.

Social Democrats: 28.7% (+1.7)
2014 result: 31.0%
Sweden's traditional "party of government" which governed the country uninterrupted between 1936 and 1976. Has been in government since 2014 together with the Greens, participating in its first coalition since 1957, after spending its longest period out of government since the intruduction of universal suffrage during the eight years Fredrik Reinfeldt was Prime Minister from 2006 to 2014. Led by former union leader Stefan Löfven since 2012, who became the party's first leader to become Prime Minister without any prior cabinet (or parliamentary) experience. After a rough initial few years in government the party has seemed to bounce back during the past year, embracing more tough-on-crime rhetoric and policy in combination with somewhat of a shift to the left on issues regarding economics and welfare. Löfven has also seen his approval numbers increase somewhat as he has become more comfortable in his role as Prime Minister, with his response to the terror attack in Stockholm this April recieving praise.

Moderate Party: 22.4% (+0.2)
2014 result: 23.3%
Part of the centre-right coalition "The Alliance" since 2004 and Sweden's main rightwing party since the late 70s, the Moderates have had a rough few years in opposition. After the departure of Fredrik Reinfeldt, electorally the most successful leader the party has ever had, the party elected parliamentary group leader Anna Kinberg Batra as his successor. However her leadership was somewhat tarnished from the outset as she had participated in the negotiations of the December Agreement. After the agreement fell the Moderates saw increased support during 2016, but the numbers had begun to stagnate again towards the end of the year. In January of 2017 Anna Kinberg Batra made a spectacular gamble by announcing that the party was breaking the cordon sanataire around the Sweden Democrats by being willing to negotiate with them in parliament. However with the Liberals and Centre Party being vehemently opposed to working with the Sweden Democrats or form a government which would be dependent on them, the announcement also exposed a big divide among the Alliance. Afterwards the support for the Moderates dropped sharply, with a great deal of voters, especially in Stockholm, turning away from the Moderates and going to the Centre Party instead. The party dropped below the Sweden Democrats and hovered around 15%, the same result as the disastrous 2002 election. Anna Kinberg Batra faced heavy criticism internally, not necessarily because of the announcement, as a great deal of her critics had pushed her in that direction in the first place, but because of her lack of charisma and poor performance in debates and interviews. Eventually she was forced out and Ulf Kristersson, former Minister for Social Security and shadow finance minister under Kinberg Batra, became the new leader. Now things seem to have calmed down and the party is pretty much back where they were a year ago in the polls.

Sweden Democrats: 17.3% (-0.2)
2014 result: 12.9%
Sweden's far-right party, founded by neo-nazis (as well as some real nazis, including a former SS officer) in the late 80s, since 2005 it has been led by Jimmie Åkesson who has tried to turn the party into a more respectable movement. They refer to themselves as a centrist party (lol) but have clearly taken a shift to the right in the past few years, especially in terms of economic policy, as the leadership position themselves as a possible partner for the Moderates. Peaked in the polls during 2015 at the height of the refugee crisis and during the whole debate surrounding the December Agreement. Have since dropped back somewhat but are still above their 2014 election result.

Centre Party: 9.5% (+0.4)
2014 result: 6.1%
Like its sister parties in Finland and Norway, the Swedish Centre Party is traditionally an agrarian party sprung out of the farmer's movement, and was even called the Farmer's League up to the late 50s. While historically seen as the party on the right that was most capable of working with the Social Democrats at times, as it did in a coalition during the 50s and in budget negotiations during the mid-90s, under current leader Annie Lööf and her predecessor Maud Olofsson the party took a sharp turn rightwards and embraced the Alliance, with factions and parts of the youth league flirting with libertarianism. It's probably the most immigration-friendly party on the right, which meant that it has attracted former Moderates, generally in the Stockholm area, disappointed with the party's rightward shift after Reinfeldt's departure, as well as former Green voters. In most polls its leader Annie Lööf is the most popular party leader, just ahead of Löfven, and during the Moderate crisis this year it got as much as 13-14% in some polls. Though that's still a far-cry from the dizzying heights of 25% which the party reached during the 70s when it was the largest party on the right and its leader Thorbjörn Fälldin served as Prime Minister.

Left Party: 7.3% (-0.4)
2014 result: 5.7%
Sweden's former communist party, which broke away from the Social Democrats in 1917. Dropped communism with the end of the cold war and has generally tried to moderate itself since then and broaden its appeal by embracing feminism and environmentalism. Has been led by Jonas Sjöstedt, part of the party's moderate wing, since 2012. Was left out of government by Stefan Löfven in 2014, much to Sjöstedt's disappointment, but even so it has proven to be a bit of a blessing, as the party has benefitted in the polls by being the only opposition party to the left of the government, while it still gets some influence by negotiating the budget with the government.

Liberals: 5.1% (-0.4)
2014 result: 5.4%
What remains of the Liberal Coalition Party which was the main opposition to the conservatives during the early 1900s and introduced universal suffrage together with the Social Democrats during the 1910s. Led by Jan Björklund since 2007, the party had a strong focus on education during its years in government, with Björklund as Education Minister being especially associated with the issue. However poor results in international comparisons for the Swedish eduction system meant that their reputation in that area was tarnished and the party got its second worst result in history in the last election. Has struggled in opposition, with difficulties finding a niche while the Centre Party has attracted a great deal of liberal-minded voters. After attempts to focus on defence issues has failed to attract new voters the party now just seems directionless, and has entered a bit of a slow decline bringing it closer and closer to the 4% threshold. The party changing it's name from the Liberal People's Party (commonly referred to as the People's Party) to the Liberals in 2015 didn't do much of a difference either. Björklund was challenged for the leadership this year by Birgitta Ohlsson, from the party's more social liberal wing, however she withdrew her candidacy and has announced her departure from politics after finding insufficient support.

Greens: 3.9% (-0.8 )
2014 result: 6.9%
Entered into government for the first time in 2014 and has not had an easy time of things. After having to give up several pledges in negotiations with the Social Democrats, including pretty much their entire liberal immigration policy, they've gotten the image of being a bit of a joke. Led by two spokespersons, Education Minister Gustav Fridolin who's had the job since 2011 and Deputy PM/Minister for International Development and Climate Isabella Lövin who was elected in 2016, who also happen to be the two least popular party leaders. Has tried to shift focus back to environmental issues in the past year, but still hover around the 4% threshold with little sign of any improvement on the horizon.

Christian Democrats: 3.0% (-0.1)
2014 result: 4.6%
The smallest member of the Alliance, seemingly in constant danger of failing to meet the threshold and falling out of parliament. Led by Ebba Busch Thor since 2015, after focusing healthcare and pensioners during the government years, the party took a shift to the right after the election and tried to find a niche between the Moderates and Sweden Democrats as a more respectably tough-on-immigration and tough-on-crime party. However that strategy failed spectacularly as the Moderates also moved rightward and there was suddenly no room left there. Has recently tried to pivot back towards healthcare but with little success coming out of it, with Ebba Busch Thor's strong focus on law and order and immigration in the past years not exactly granting her a lot of credibility there. She's also far less charismatic and popular than her predecessor Göran Hägglund. The party has pretty much been below the 4% threshold in every poll since the election.

Feminist Initiative: 1.3% (-0.7)
2014 result: 3.1%
Sweden's 9th party, which gained more prominence after a great deal of debates around gender inequality in 2013 but failed to meet the threshold in the following year's election. Founded and led by Gudrun Schyman, formerly the leader of the Left Party between 1992 and 2003, the party has carved out its own little niche as a socially liberal and left-leaning party with it's strongest support coming from younger people in larger cities. While it didn't enter the Riksdag in the last election, the party is present in several municipal assemblies, including Stockholm where its part of the governing majority together with the Social Democrats, Greens and Left.

Is there 2014 deal to keep out SD still on?  I thought I read somewhere that M will back out of that deal after the election.  I could be totally wrong.

No, Decemberöverenskommelsen (DÖ i.e. In english DIE) was killed by the Christian Democrats in 2016.

However both L and C has said that they do not want to govern with the support off SD. So The Alliance (M, L, C and KD) needs to become larger than the left-green (S, MP and V) for a shift off guvernement.

If you're talking about the December Agreement (decemberöverenskommelsen), in which the government and the four Alliance parties agreed not to block the budget of a sitting minority government with the help of the Sweden Democrats, the Christian Democrats backed out of that deal followed by the Moderates and the rest of the Alliance in 2015, less than a year after the parties agreed to it. So that deal is dead and buried a long time ago.

The informal "cordon sanitaire" against the Sweden Democrats are more or less still in force, none of the other parliamentary would go into coalition with them, but the Moderates and Christian Democrats have said that they're open to cooperating with them on certain issues and in some places on the local level there have been some cooperation. Most notably in Hässleholm, a small city in   southern Sweden, the Social Democratic mayor was ousted in favour of a Moderate one in favour of the Moderates supporting a Sweden Democratic politician for Deputy Mayor.¹

The Centre Party and the Liberals have been very critical of the Moderates² move towards the Sweden Democrats which has strained the relationship between the parties a lot.

<sup>1) The Sweden Democrat resigned shortly thereafter due to scandal when it was discovered he had cheated the city out of money and was instead replaced by a Christian Democrat...

2) If you're wondering why no one has bothered to criticize the Christian Democrats, it's because no one cares about them or take them seriously.</sup>   

Three of the defectors from SD, Hanna Wigh, Pavel Gamov and Margareta Larsson are forming their own political group in parliament, in order to better manage parliamentary work and seek financial support. They probably won't run in the election and even if they did it likely wouldn't make any impact, but the most interesting thing about this is the name they chose: Sveriges partipolitiskt oberoende lista (Sweden's Non-Partisan List), with the abbreviation SVPOL, which also happens to be the hashtag for talk about Swedish politics on Twitter.

If that isn't 100% intentional I'll drown myself in the river.

Why did they defect from SD?

They defected for different reasons.

Margareta Larsson (who also happens to be party leader Jimmy Åkessons mother-in-law) defected as a protest against what she felt was a too controlling party leadership and lack of democracy with-in the party itself.

Hanna Wigh defected after she was sexually assaulted by another MP for the Swedish Democrats and the party hushed down the incident.

Pavel Gamov didn't defect as much as he was thrown out by the leadership due to a scandalous trip to Moscow (most likely paid for by the Russian government) where he got so awfully drunk it wasn't even acceptable by Russian standards, threatening and assaulting a female party member who was also in Moscow. Which sort of make Hanna Wigh teaming up with him... weird.     

How likely do you think it is the Alliance can return to power?  Also with thresholds, do you see parties on either side missing them as if the Christian Democrats make it but Greens miss it that would seem to favour the Alliance whereas Christian Democrats miss it and Greens make it favour the Alliance.  While social democracy is not in quite the crisis it is in much of the rest of Europe (UK and Portugal perhaps being the exceptions and only in Portugal are they well ahead), its nowhere nearly as dominant in the Nordic Countries as it was in the past.  Do you see Nordic voters moving rightwards?

Swedish democrat voters are going towards the M and SocialDemocrats. Because both parties have slowly adopting some of the immigration rhetoric.  Even the Prime minister despite being from a party that was so opposed to SD has said the immigration policy in sweden in the last two decades was a mistake and afterwards instead of it backfiring he actually gained support mainly from those Social Democrat voters while despite what people predicted he didn't lose any support to the other left wing parties.

Are KD doomed, or are they the sort of party that has Avery resilient core?

The Christian Democrats always "borrows" votes from the Moderaterna every election. I.e. tactical voting from moderate voters. However this time Moderaterna has less voters to "lend".

So we will se that the Christian Democrats slowly gets closer to 4 % this year. However they might not pass the threshold at 4% in the end.

I many Swedish communes (and cities) the threshold is instead 2%. So you migh split you vote voting for Christian Democrats to the Riksdag but Modteraterna at the local level.

You would think the same would end up happening between Social Democrats and the Greens, no? In which case, taking a punt, it would seem both parties wing up over the threshold?

Also, seeing as Feminist Initiative are basically down and out, could their remaining support flow towards the Greens?

When I was handing out ballot papers in the last election the Feminist Initiative representative told the voters to vote for the left party or the greens at the regional level were they did not stand so there is a clear tactical voting between these three parties. However the Feminist Initiative  is not dead and has got 1,5% in the polls so I don not think that there votes will got to the Greens. I do not think that social democratic voters will tactically vote for the Greens.

I think Feminist Initiative's chances of passing the threshold are pretty slim unless something unexpected happens that throw them into the spot-light before the election. They do however have a small vocal and very loyal core that will stay with them through thick and thin and who won't abandon them to cast a tactical vote for the government, which although preferred compared to the right-wing parties are not popular among the urban idealistic left-wing youth. Think of them as Jill Stein voting Berniecrats, the government as Hillary Clinton, the Alliance as Jeb Bush and the Sweden Democrats as Trump and you get the dynamic.

Social Democrats voting tactically for the Greens is a very likely scenario though. It already happened in 2002. 

The Christian Democrats have been hovering around the threshold for the past two elections, but they've never spent as much time below the threshold in polls as during the last term. While they've usually counted on Moderate voters saving them, a number of political scientists have said that there's usually a limit for when people are willing to support another party to bring them over a threshold. If Kd are polling close to or around 4% near the election they'll likely be saved, but if they are closer to 3% people may be turned away, too afraid of their vote not mattering if they give it to a party that'll end up outside of parliament.

Out of the two I would say the Greens are more likely to make it above the threshold, both because they haven't polled quite as badly as Kd during the term and can likely count on some Social Democratic support voters, and because they're still the most trusted party on environmental issues according to the polls. If there's some unexpected event that puts the environment into focus during the campaign the Greens could stand to benefit, while Kd which have begun to (re-)focus more on elderly care and healthcare recently, they face tougher competition from the Social Democrats, the Sweden Democrats, and to some extent the Left Party.

If the Liberals also continue their slow decline and start to wobble around the threshold close to the election it would be detrimental to Kd, as potential support voters from the Moderates would be split between which party to led their support to, and I strongly suspect that Kd would lose that fight.

Regarding FI, I agree with the poster above that they have a core base that'll likely won't vote for any other party. However if they're far from the threshold close to the election, which I suspect they will be, all but their most convinced supporters will likely turn to other parties. Possibly the Greens, though their stint in government may decrease those chances, but likely the Left and under some circumstances I think that the Centre Party could pick up a few former FI supporters. Not because of any similarities in their position on the left/right-axis, but because I believe a not-so insiginificant number of FI voters mostly support them because of cultural issues and could therefore come to support the Centre Party under Annie Lööf.

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?

If not would not the Kd vote be wasted from the point of view of a Center-Right alliance ?

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.)

They will mostly stay with KD. KD is very strong at the local level especially in Jönköping, "little Jerusalem" and the swedish bible belt i.e. Småland. Even if KD just gets 3% they will survive in the long term. Their youth wing tries to be the swedish republicans and their former leader Sara Skyttedal claims to be the bluest swedish politican.

I'm guessing part of their support would disperse, but there would still be 1-2% of the population who are committed Christians and presumably would care more about supporting KD than making sure the Alliance wins.

?

I'd be a member and strong supporter of the Moderates but I'd vote for whatever Alliance party needs my vote the most (most likely the Christian Democrats). Voted Moderates in the poll because I'm not going to vote tactically on Atlas :P.

I think this can be the official thread to the Swedish elections. Therefore, here's the average of the polls: (from Wikipedia)

26.8% S
22.6% M
17.8% SD
   9.9% C
   8.2% V
   4.7% L (FP)
   3.8% MP
   3.0% KD
   3.2% Fi/Others

40.1% Alliance (M+C+L+KD)
38.8% S+V+MP

2014 results:
()

Replying to Mike's post, these are the percents for the coalitions factoring in the threshold.

37.8% (M+C+L)
35.0% (S+V)
17.3% SD

Others:
MP: 3.8%
KD: 3.0%
FI: 2.0%
Other: 1.6%

Ha, I meant to put this on IP; but I guess it can be used for the actual election.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure the S led faction will win (Nordics often break towards their government, and they're not polling that badly). The big thing will be whether MP (and KD?) get back in.

Rooting hard for the Social Democrats.

Change since the 2014 election:

26.8% S - 31%, -4.2
22.6% M - 23.3%, -0.7
17.8% SD - 12.9%, +4.9
   9.9% C - 6.1%, +3.8
   8.2% V - 5.7%, +2.5
   4.7% L (FP) - 5.4%, -0.7
   3.8% MP - 6.9%, -3.1
   3.0% KD - 4.6%, -1.6
   3.2% Fi/Othersr - 2.72%, +0.48

Biggest losses from current S/MP governing parties, gains for SD, C and V. Interesting that M is not really capitalizing here, rather its C and SD; while some left/progressive voters are migrating to V.
Take a look at the Feb 16-18 Poll:

22.4% S
20.5% M
22.1% SD
   9.3% C
   10.0% V
   4.7% L (FP)
   3.4% MP
   2.6% KD
   4.9% Fi/Othersr  

are L in any trouble or will they stay above the threshold?

Go SD.

Yes go Social Democrats!

You all know how I am about political Moderates :P

LET'S GO MODERATES

I am for the other SD :)

by the looks of the polling, MP (greens) are going to fall out first...

since everyone's doing it :P  i'm cheering V! V! V!

The court case in the link has dominated coverage in the last week. Two of the three jury members decided not to sentence  a muslim man for spousal violence because he 'comes from a better family than her' and because she was deemed untrustworthy due to going to the police instead of trying to solve the case with his family. The judge and the third jury members wanted him to be sentenced, but with a 2-2 result, there is no conviction.
Both jury members had a immigration background and were appointed by the Centre Party as active members in local politics. One of the two has clearly stated that she thinks Swedish law should allow for Sharia Law rulings. After the intense media attention, both persons have been thrown out of the party, but it is a very poor look for the Centre Party.


 https://www.thelocal.se/20180305/controversial-assault-ruling-sparks-debate-in-sweden-thelocal

How the hell is this election going to end in anything but a deadlock? I don't see either the Moderates' Alliance or Lofven's government gaining a majority given Sweden Democrats' strength.

Where do we end up?

In 2014 the mainstream parties (Alliance + S bloc) signed an agreement which would let the leader of the largest bloc be PM while the other bloc abstains on budgets and other important stuff. Does that agreement still stand?

This though the Swedish Social Democrats are probably one of ny least favourites in Europe. Still better than everyone else though

Also, what are the policies of the Sweden Democrats other than "f*** the EU" and "deport inmigrants"? Are they economically left or right?

I know, I was being cute ;)

It seems to be an article of faith that when it comes to crunch time, Feminist voters will vote tactically for the Greens to get them over the line.

This is why the right makes fun of Sweden. In all seriousness though, it's disturbing and sad to watch the native population give their country away. When migrants can get away with crimes because of liberal judges and/or immigrant jurors but the people complaining about it risk arrest for hate speech, it just adds another level of absurdity.

I'd vote SD, but I doubt they could save Sweden even if they did win.

I'm so old that I remember when this particular board used to be a place to discuss psephology, not a place where people posted propaganda.

Sweden Democrats is the only good option here. Truly awful parties other than them.

1. No one risks being jailed for hate speech because they complain about immigration and crime. Lol.

2. L is close to the threshold but will likely stay in.

3. SD is not particularly interested in economic issues and are therefore a bit all over the place. I guess it sort of averages out to centrist.

4. The agreement on abstaining and letting the other bloc rule only lasted a year before KD left it and M quickly followed. It's fairly toxic with the centre-right base.

5. What will happen after the election is unclear because no one wants to answer hard questions about it. It's fairly clear M+KD would prefer ruling with SD support over having continued leftwing influence. C and L seem to not want that but it's unclear what their alternative would be.

A separate thread for analyzing the election without inane cheerleading might be a good idea. Personally I'm pretty unenthusiastic with all our parties. Since I won't vote SD or V and I feel like the government ought to be punished for their actions I'll probably vote for a centre-right opposition party but I'm not sure which one yet.

It hasn't even been that long. I remember those days and I've only been around a few years.

Enough to give SD enough concessions to gain their support, or would they just be banking on their support because they wouldn't want to bring the right bloc down? If the latter, and SD don't play ball, then their unwillingness to see the left bloc govern as a minority will likely be returned.

As for the poll: V

More polls: (with some conflicting numbers)

Inizio poll from March: (http://www.electograph.com/2018/03/sweden-inizio-poll-for-aftonbladet.html)

26.4% S, 105 seats
24.5% M, 97
15.7% SD, 62
  8.8% C, 35
  6.9% V, 27
  5.9% KD, 23
  3.6% L, 0
  3.3% Mp, 0
  2.6% FI, 0
  2.3% Others

42.8% Alliance, 155 seats
36.6% Red-Green, 132

Poll conducted between 1 and 5 March. Polled 2,324 voters. MoE of 2.0%

Demoskop poll from March: (http://www.electograph.com/2018/03/sweden-demoskop-poll-for-expressen.html)

27.2% S, 102 seats
21.8% M, 81
18.6% SD, 69
  8.5% V, 32
  7.9% C, 29
  5.1% L, 19
  4.6% Mp, 17
  3.3% KD, 0
  1.8% FI, 0
  1.2% Others

40.3% Red-Green, 151 seats
38.1% Alliance, 129

Poll conducted between 27 February and 7 March. Polled 1,620 voters. MoE of 2.4%

Moderatpartiet is actually, despite the name, more or less the mainstream right-of-Center party, towards the conservative end of their coalition. My dad was actually a member of their youth organization in college and went to several of their camps/retreats. His older brother (my uncle, who still lives in Sweden) is in the Center Party, who are more libertarian

Is a M-Kd minority government with SD support the likeliest scenario?

I don't know why but I have the feeling something like that is going to happen.

I know, just memeing :)


Oh, that's pretty cool! The Center Party seems like a pretty good party too.  If you don't mind, where would you side?

so it seems the election will hinge more on the smaller parties staying above the threshold more than the larger parties increasing or decreasing in size?

Not that different from what we had last year in Norway, actually.

I’d probably swing between Liberals and Center. I was a big Reinfeldt fan but Moderates are tacking right to box out SD, who are godawful.

Ah ok. Thanks!

The support for the Feminist Initiative is on the perfect level where it isn't high enough to get them to parliament but is high enough to screw the Greens.

Former Sweden Democratic Youth leader Gustav Kasselstrand founded a new party to the right of the Sweden Democrats, named Alternative for Sweden (Alternativ för Sverige). Under Kasselstrand's leadership, SD cut all ties with Sweden Democratic Youth because they had become too radical for SD.

Some consider Kasselstrand's move to form a new party to be "a gamechanger" in Swedish politics (Daniel Poohl, CEO of a left-wing organization) as AfS are "bringing together far-right factions that have resisted cooperation in the past and have not been able to find homes within the Sweden Democrats or the small neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement." Others, like political scientist Cas Mudde, say that this is great news for SD, as it backs up SD's claim that they have become more moderate -- so moderate that extremists leave the party in droves and found their own one.

I’d be more inclined to agree with Mudde until is AvS polling.

Also: is is Kasselsteand a Petry fan?

I doubt AfS will have much of an impact, but hopefully this continues to push radical elements out of SD.

Agreed.
Seems more like the Gauland supporting type to me...

Yeah, I forgot that Petry sort of represented the “moderate” (using that term very lightly) wing of AfD before she left the party.

Wait, does that mean that SD are essentially going to become Sweden's version of Blue Reform, except more popular?

I mean, the DPP has also split a rightist formation. Surprised Norwegian Progress hasn't also done so by now.

What is it about Skane that makes it so good for SD anyway? And conversely, is there any chance of SD doing well up North this year? - going by *global trends* analysis, working class small towns like Kiruna or Gallivare seem to have avoided giving them many votes up until now.

Lots of migrants and refugees, and lots of problems with some of them.

Generally, lots but of immigrants by itself isn't a predictor of high support for RWPPs, and Skane has been right wing for a long time. To my knowledge, Malmo isn't a bourgeois city like Stockholm so I don't think it's a class thing at hand either

The "lots of problems with them" is the important part, there is an ongoing gang war in Malmo, crime is high, Jews have been persecuted and so on. Malmo is an old industrial city with a strong working class culture. These places are often good for RWPPs. This thesis explains the SD appeal in Malmo fairly well: http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=1459290&fileOId=1487460 (http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=1459290&fileOId=1487460)

I'm pretty certain M won't let a Red-Green minority form like they did last term. I however don't think they're ready for any sort of formal deal with SD. So more the latter alternative you mention.

Other things brought up here:

1. Kasselstrand is a crazy fascist and the kind of guy I'd fear for my life from. Thankfully, open fascism has never been a particularly popular concept in Sweden. He'll get some die-hard racists on board but I doubt they will have much impact.

2. The Swedish North has a very strong left-wing tradition. Places like Gällivare and Kiruna extremely so. These are also places where there aren't that many immigrants and where depopulation means people don't necessarily mind some people moving in. SD has crept up in support in places like Dalarna though where the left doesn't have quite the same stranglehold.

3. SD support in Skåne is less about Malmö and more about the rest of the region. It should also be noted that SD used to be a lot more Skåne-based than they are now, because their support has gone up more in other parts of the country.

For reference, SD got about their national average in Malmö but racked up a lot of votes elsewhere.

Skåne has seen a lot of immigrants and also a lot of problems with those immigrants. Malmö is in pretty bad shape. Skåne is also historically more conservative than most of Sweden (not Malmö but the more rural areas). To crazily generalize, Skåne is more like the US South with large landowners having influence historically. It was part of Denmark until the 1600s and was thus more feudal. To some extent I have a feeling its voting patterns still resemble other such parts of the world more than the rest of Sweden. It's, for lack of a better word, a bit less Swedish than the rest of Sweden, sort of like how Denmark is a bit less Scandinavian. It does have industrial areas hit hard by loss of manufacturing but I don't feel that is the main reason for their rise much like I don't buy that as the story behind Trump support. There are lot of angry, racist, fairly well-off white men in Skåne. :P

as I like to do, if our poll results were the actual results...

S: 110 Seats (-3)
SD: 92 Seats (+43)
V: 80 Seats (+59)
M: 43 Seats (-41)
C: 24 seats (+2)
Other: 0 seats (-60)

11% of votes go to parties below threshold.

Most likely coalition: S+V 190/349 seats

If it comes down to it, would SD do a confidence-and-supply deal with The Alliance? Would such an agreement have to be agreed upon by The Alliance, or could SD just do it if they want?

SD is free to vote for Alliance budgets if they want. However, I'm not sure the Allicance would form a government if they didn't know their budget was guaranteed to pass. It is also not clear that SD would offer supply and confidence without anything in return (I doubt it). And, crucially, C (and maybe L) probably wouldn't agree to any such deal with SD.

It looks like without SD support, Alliance can't get enough to form a government, and with SD support, some Alliance parties would leave. Are their chances of forming a government pretty much non-existent at the moment?

The most recent Sentio poll has SD on 23%, Moderates on 19.5% and KD on 4.8%. With the Liberals and FI below the threshold, that is enough for a majority. So it is possible that there can be a right-wing majority, that is not dependent on the two pro-immigration parties. I don't know exactly how strong the Reinfeldt/Bildt etc. wing is within the Moderates, but with a result like the Sentio poll, there should be a decent possibility of a M-KD government with SD support.

That did seem like an outlier though, if I'm not mistaken. Other polls have shown a worse result for the right-wing parties.

While you're right, the thing is that the left certainly won't have anything close to a majority. So it's unclear what would happen. There has been speculation that C and/or L could join S. That'd be very controversial though and potentially a little suicidal for them. It also is unclear to what extent they want to work with V or MP (probably not very much).

Ok thanks!

SAP are currently pledging to abolish all religious schools, which I assume is mainly to target madrassas without looking racist.

It is precisely that. Though at the same time they're pushing an amnesty for Afghani refugees and allowing public prayer calls so I'm not sure their triangulation is going to be all that effective in the end.

Probably Social Democrats, maybe moderates.

My Isidewith results say my vote for V in the poll was best for my values, according to it I side with...
V 67% of the time,
S 66% of the time,
M 44% of the time,
SD 30% of the time,
and Centre 29% of the time.

Seriously?? OK that's insane.

While SAP has in the past advocated banning religious schools I think the current proposal is to review all schools on a regular basis and to make harder to get license to run one not to ban them.

The worst part of this veiled racist nonsense is that Jews (and to a lesser extent conservative Christians) get royally screwed. Want to run a normal Christian/Jewish school? Too bad! Want to butcher meat in a kosher manner? Whoops, that's too close to Halal ::)

Apparently Jewish schools get to remain open under the SAP plan because they would be ethnic rather than religious, or so I heard.

I think it's because most religious schools in Sweden are relatively new (a product of the charter movement), but the one Jewish school law is protected by the rules of sui generis.

Basically they're being effectively closed by a pincer. The government will close off public funding for them (as exists in some countries already) but there isn't really any alternative sources of funding because the Swedish government already bans fee-paying full time education for under 18s? I could be totally wrong there.

Now there's a good idea

Totally in agreement there, although it would cause a shockwave amongst the British middle class if it was ever applied here.

That's why it would be a good thing though.

The Greens are gonna run on raising immigration. Not sure it's a wise choice even for them.

Given that most Swedish political parties are unusually pragmatic - in different ways o/c - to such an extent that we can even label it an important part of Swedish political culture, the Greens are a great mystery.

Haha, very true. If they and KD both miss the threshold I won't shed any tears.

Brannon wants to visit SD to “learn from them”, but they don’t want him:

https://www.salon.com/2018/04/03/steve-bannon-reveals-plans-to-visit-sweden-to-learn-from-the-nations-far-right-party_partner/

Non-US posters: is Bannon viewed as particularly extreme even beyond Trump?

I doubt many people know who he is. Those who do are probably likely to view him as the main alt-right "influential" within his (former) circle, so yes, they will probably view him as more extreme than Trump.

That said, having Bannon come over isn't bad in PR terms because he's Bannon (most people don't know him), it's bad because he's tied to Trump, who is very unpopular in Europe, even among many voters for radical right-wing parties.

Lots of talk about AfS in the right-wing internet sphere. Swedes, do you have the impression that they are taking off? Chances of them making it into parliament?

I was previously under the impression that AvS would be small, and the defection of the far-right would be a net benefit for the SD. But if they're actually taking off enough to come close to entering parliament they could be harming SD.

By a) normalizing SD, who look moderate in comparison, and b) moving the Overton window to the right, they could still help increase the chances of SD government cooperation with the center-right (through a demand-and-supply agreement or on an ad-hoc basis, not from within the government), even if SD's percentage of the vote would be a bit lower. I hope AfS manage to make it in and would consider voting for them if they poll higher than 3%.

I'd rate their chances as rather low. Right now they're sort of in the spot-light because of the defections but besides that they seem to be rather unknown among the general public. Gustav Kasselstrand has had a following among the alt-right for a long time but it doesn't seem to translate to the comman SD-voter. When Kasselstrand was expelled from the party there was hardly a dent in SD's poll numbers.

I also think people have sort of a hard time to differentiate what makes AfS different from SD. Back when Kasselstrand was still a member of SD his main beef with the leadership was that he didn't like their pro-Israel policies, that he thought the party lacked internal democracy, and that he wanted them to move right on economics (a subject he has made a 180 U-turn on since he now accuses SD of having become to close to the right...) So I don't see what would compel the average SD-voter abandon the safe option to vote for an alternative (pun intended) that may not make it in and thus risk wasting their vote.

I meant AvS might harm SD by taking away a chunk of the vote SD can’t make up with center-right coverts.

Sure, but SD's actual percentage of the vote doesn't matter as much as its coalitionability. It might be better for SD to win 17% of the vote but to be perceived as the more moderate party than to win 23%, to still be called Nazis, and to be sidelined. Of course, should AfS really win so much that SD barely make any gains compared to 2014, this would be different, but this scenario does not seem too likely to me.

Thank you for your answer, SwedishCheese. How anti-Israel are AfS exactly? I suppose I could live with a "not our problem, don't engage with it" stance to the point where I could still vote for them over SD (who are better on this issue), but anything further than that (i.e. outspoken solidarity with "Palestine") would be a dealbreaker.

AfS are in favor of repatriation of unassimilated foreigners, that is far more radical than SD's policy.

Yes, I do not recall SD campaigning on deporting "hundreds of thousands. At least." I cannot think of another RRWP in Western Europe that has explicitly said the same, either.

()

While the FPÖ is not saying it, they are doing it right now:

Last year, there were a record 12.000 deportations here (under SPÖVP).

But with Kickl (FPÖ) recently speeding up the raids (as campaigned on), deportations this year are likely reaching 20.000-30.000

So, in the coming 5 years this would mean 100.000-150.000 removals from the country - assuming they keep the pace.

Since not many Swedes want to back full-blown fascism, AfS is unlikely to do much better than their various predecessors on the far-right fringe.

I used to know a Kasselstrand fan, very weird person. And extremely anti-semitic.

Kasselstrand's position is that Palestine should be internationally recognized as an independent state, according to himself based on his nationalistic belief that every people (and he's counts the Palestinians as one) has a right to their own sovereign nation and right to expel people with another nationality and culture.

... ???

I used to know an Alliance voter online, very weird person. And extremely smug. All these parties must be like that as well.

This positioning doesn't pass the bullsh*t test. No Palestinian supporter on the far right actually cares about Palestinians, they only care about opposing Jews. Regardless, the damage on this subject is already done, as Sweden is unlikely to withdraw its recognition of Palestine even under an Alliance or right-wing government. If AfS want to stay neutral (no foreign aid to P., neutral votes in international fora) I could live with their stance, otherwise it becomes problematic. Anyway, difficult to form an opinion of them. I will just follow in what direction they develop themselves. Seems like they attracted some of the more serious SD politicians.

I don't remember neither Kasselstrand or Hahne actually saying anything about Palestine after 2011 and even then they justified as a counter move to SD stance against Palestine statehood. I doubt it's in anyway central question in AfS agenda.

I was just noting that people liking Kasselstrand are very rare and the only one I've encountered was predictably fascist and weird.

And it's a little odd that someone who makes such a big show out of Jewish identity would be so positive towards people like Kasselstrand. I can assure you he doesn't make us feel very safe.

Anyway, the signalling of AfS is very obvious if one knows anything about the far-right.

How can you tell if a far-right party is actually closeted Nazis?

1. Does their hatred of Jews trump their hatred of Muslims so much that they oppose Israel? Check!
2. Does their hatred of global world order/the US/capitalism/The West (read:Jews) trump their hatred of Muslims so much that they oppose the US, NATO etc? Check!
3. Do they for unclear reasons make a big deal out of animal rights in the tradition of a certain mustachioed gentleman? Check!
4. Do they get their inspiration from creepy videos where people shout about race war? Check!
5. Do they support openly racist "identitarians"? Check!

They're also not attracting serious SDers. People like Mikael Jansson were always uncomfortable with SD dropping the overt racism. If one knows anything about Swedish politics this is very clear. SD no longer opposes race-mixing and this upsets some people. Though not very many outside their activist base. Toss in a few dissatisfied whingers who are in it for personal reasons and you have a party but not a very appealing one.

Embarrassing follow-up: turns out I have a friend running for parliament on the AFS list. The guy has turned incredibly racist in the last few years but it's still a bit of a crazy transition from the libertarian he used to be.

Though I guess if you consider support for Nelson Mandela the biggest betrayal of the post-war era and that immigration is problematic because black people are too unintelligent, there aren't a lot of options on the table.

Geez.

Have you talked to this guy since? Tried to knock some sense into him?

I argued with him online about the "blacks are too dumb to work" position but I haven't met him in person in about a year. I think he's become a bit of a lost cause.

In other news, the Centre party sided with the government on their amnesty mess so the Alliance is probs done.

https://www.thelocal.se/20180504/swedish-social-democrats-aim-to-halve-refugee-numbers

Social Democratic aim to halve refugee numbers.

I guess a resumption of the Green-Red coalition is out of the question?

It'll be quite hard to sell a continuation of the coalition to the membership of either party. At the moment it doesn't even seem as if the two parties are trying to hide their contempt for each-other any longer.

I think if there's one thing we can be sure about when it comes to this election it is that government will be hard for whoever wins. (Though that seems to be standard in European elections nowadays...)

I wonder, given the collapse of Alliance; is SAP making overtures to Centre, the Liberals etc to see if they don't mind supporting a Social Democratic government? A SAP-Centre government with outside support from the Liberals and Greens could probably be viable numerically (although I don't know about politically).

It's not really feasible. The reason the Alliance are having troubles is immigration. While the Centre Party and to a lesser extent the Liberals want a more generous immigration policy, both the Moderates and the Social Democrats wants further restrictions.

So the Centre Party doesn't agree with SAP on either immigration or economics, while they at least agree on economics with the Moderates. So if C isn't able to agree with M they aren't very likely to agree with SAP and form government with them.

My bet for a long time has been that we either get a pure Moderate minority government or a pure Social Democratic minority government.

Assuming the Liberals and Greens get in, yes and even then they probably would be a minority government (albeit one that would usually win votes probably).

Is The Alliance officially dead or just facing a lot of disagreement over immigration?

Officially it's still alive, I think all the Alliance parties still claim that they want an Alliance government. But everyone knows it's kind of dead due to the immigration split.

Ah. Any chance the Moderate Party reverts to how it used to be post-election?

Also, if you don't mind, who are you supporting?

No, they have invested a lot of effort trying to re-brand themselves as a party that is though on immigration. Shifting their position on immigration and get people to see their new policy as credible and reliable has been one of their main focuses the last four years and changing position once more would be deadly for their support.

My guess is that although they want an Alliance government they'd be willing to sacrifice it if the choice was between that and start bleeding voters to SD again.

Yeah, I agree with the above analysis that they're gonna stick to a tougher line for at least this election.

I don't really know who I'll support I'm pretty dissatisfied with all the parties tbh.

What are the current, official positions/statements of the center-right parties on a possible coalition with the far-right SD ?

Together, these parties would get some 60% right now.

I think everyone is officially opposed to it, but most people suspect M and KD would be open to it in practice. C is definitely totally opposed. L is somewhere in between that I think.

Thx.

Between such a coalition of M+SD+KD, a SAP+M "grand" coalition, a SAP+M+SD really grand coalition and a minority government of either left or right, how would you rate the likelihoods in % ?

Why does YouGov continually show SD as being so much further ahead than any other poll?

I would usually say because it is an online poll and because of young people being strong Far-Right supporters. And because Sweden has high turnout, which means young people are turning out in big numbers as well, they are also very accurate (YouGov and Sentio, both online polls, were the most accurate in predicting the SD-share in 2014).

Ah ok. Makes sense.

I feel distrusting of YouGov in the Swedish election, but then again, it was the only major prediction group to predict a hung parliament in the UK last year.

I'm going to say - Swedes can correct me if I'm wrong - that a minority government is far, far, far more likely than any cross-bloc coalition.

Lots of things to answer. Online polls tend to show higher SD support. They've been more accurate for SD in the past but not the most accurate overall.

Sweden has a high bar for being in government together and also a long history of minority governments so I'd say minority government is most likely.

To be specific, the chance of an S+SD gov is 0%. M+SD+KD is like maybe 5% at most and M+S is probably a decent chance like 10%.

The most likely cross the aisle gov is probably something like S + C + L tbh.

It should be noted that the SD gained significantly in the last few months, going from 15% to around 20% and almost reaching the level of a year ago.

They will likely end up between 20-25%, putting them in a tough fight for 1st between the Social Democrats and the Moderates.

The Social Democrats are heading for an all-time low in this election, also because the Left Party is rather strong this time.

Since today is the National Day of Sweden, I think it's suitable to update with some interesting opinion polls.

(Election result 2014 in parenthesis)

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Yesterday SCB released their famous once-every-six-months poll which by many is seen as the most prestigious poll of all.

Sweden parliament:

Left party - 7,4% (5,7%)
Social Democrats - 28,3%  (31,0%)
Green Party - 4,3% (6,9%)

Centre Party - 8,7% (6,1%)
Liberals - 4,4% (5,4%)
Christian Democrats - 2,9% (4,6%)
Moderates - 22,6% (23,3%)

Sweden Democrats - 18,5% (12,9%)

---

The Gotheburg based newspaper Göteborgsposten has commissioned a poll from Sifo for the local city council election in Gothenburg.

Gothenburg city council:

Left party - 13,2% (9,4%)
Social Democrats - 15,4%  (22,4%)
Green Party - 5,0% (10,7%)

Feminist Initiative - 4,2% (4,0%)

Centre Party - 3,3% (2,7%)
Liberals - 6,3% (8,1%)
Christian Democrats - 1,8% (4,0%)
Moderates - 19,7% (22,3%)

Sweden Democrats - 9,9% (7,0%)

Democrats* - 13,9% (N/A)
Vägvalet (Road choice)* - 5,6% (4,9%)

*Local party

---

The Malmö based newspaper Sydsvenskan has also commissioned a poll from Novus for the local city council election in Malmö.

Malmö city council:

Left party - 11,1% (8,5%)
Social Democrats - 29,5%  (32,9%)
Green Party - 5,0% (8,6%)

Feminist Initiative - 2,2% (3,2%)

Centre Party - 2,3% (1,7%)
Liberals - 5,8% (5,4%)
Christian Democrats - 1,3% (1,5%)
Moderates - 22,6% (23,3%)

Sweden Democrats - 17,6% (13,1%)

It's a long shot, but supposing the Greens, Liberals, KD and FI all fall below the threshold; you could potentially have something like 15% of all votes being "wasted" as it were.

Would that start to lead to some demands for electoral reform?

The Social Democrats are dropping like a rock in Sweden right now ...

They are down 8% in the last half year, from around 30% to about 21-23% now.

I wouldn't rule out the Sweden Democrats winning 25-30% of the vote now, if they are acting as a big vacuum cleaner for former Social Democratic and Moderate voters.

The Jewish community in northern Umeå has closed down following serious threats by the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement. This means there is no Jewish community left in the northern 2/3rds of Sweden. The Jewish community laments the lack of concrete actions taken by local politicians to make sure no threats would be issued anymore.

Nordic Resistance has grown by a lot and spread like wildfire all over Sweden over the last few years. They sought to organize a march at a synagogue in Göteborg on Yom Kippur last year to intimidate Jews, but were banned from doing so.

Unfortunately, these days much of the "Jewish establishment" around the world has veered off to the far right and likes to turn a blind eye to ultra rightwing neo-Nazi anti-semitism (I mean who cares about the Nazis they only killed siox million of us) like this. They will spend 99.% of their time fretting about "anti-semitism on the left" and obsess over parsing every sentence uttered by Jeremy Corbyn, while ignoring these rightwing xenophobes. Look at how Netanyahu sucks up to anti-semitic xenophobes like Orban and Putin....

Putin? Antisemite?

In other anti-semitism news Björn Söder, 2nd Deputy Speaker of the Riksdag and former Party Secretary of the Sweden Democrats decided to open his mouth (well, technically his facebook account) and talk a bit about Jews and Swedishness again. After all, it went so well when he did it back in 2014.

A gang-related drive-by shooting in Chicago Malmö left 3 people dead and 1 seriously injured.

I expect the Swedes to send a strong signal in September.

Not a smart issue to talk about right before an election. That said, I don't think it was antisemitic. I followed the controversy, and his argument was that Sweden (essentially like Russia) is a multicultural society that comprises multiple peoples: the Swedish nation, but also Jews and Sami. According to this line of reasoning Jews and Sami are equally Swedish in terms of citizenship but are distinct peoples with a right to their own culture and heritage, together making up Sweden. Not recognizing this would essentially force these minorities into the Swedish mold.

One can agree or disagree with this. I am on the fence, and I understand why many Jews would dislike the perception of their Swedishness being questioned. I certainly would feel awkward if the Dutch right started talking about this subject. However, I don't think it is antisemitic, as I think Söder meant to say what I outlined in the above paragraph.

This is the danger with falling in love with a clever debating point, you forget how it can be used against you. This would  have been a excellent anonymous attack on a internet board, it was less smart to use by a senior member of a party, which was original founded by neo-Nazis.

YouGov poll for June

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() () () () ()

The Sweden Democrats gain 16% compared with the 2014 election and 5.5% compared with the same poll from last month.

Lowest ever result for the Social Democrats, while the Greens and Christian Democrats would be kicked out of parliament ...

On the other hand, the Left Party also gains 3.5% compared with the 2014 election.

The KD getting kicked out seems like s certainty now, the greens will be close.

I actually wonder whether the Greens could lose some potential tactical voting if the media start to focus a lot on Sweden Democrats potentially being the biggest party. Maybe some left-wingers will vote for the Social Democrats just to avoid that (even though it will probably have no effect on government formation whether Sweden Democrats are 1st or 2nd).

Is a Social Democrat-Sweden Democrat government possible? In that case it would have a big effect as it would determine who the next PM of Sweden is.

A far right PM in Sweden would be a huge thing while a centre-left one is no problem. Alternatively, same thing goes with the Moderates.

Are YouGov polls reliable in Sweden? They've largely been on the outside by showing, first, SD leading when no one else did and, now, SD leading by such large margins when no one else is.

No a coalition between the Social Democrats and Sweden Democrats are not possible.

Honestly no poll is really reliable with the Sweden Democrats, I suspect that YouGov have been able to see that they other polls gave SD too low a vote, when compared to the size of error last election and now they have gone to far to th other side.

As much as anything, it seems quite, unusual, in the context of a scandiwegie election, to be seeing such a swing away rrom the incumbent at this stage

Even if the Sweden Democrats were to be a part of a government, I am certain they would not lead it, not matter whether they are the largest party or not.

If SD really get close to 30%, a minority government of M supported from the outside by SD (and L) seems difficult to avoid unless they really want to give the finger to all these SD voters. But it's probably going to be somewhere in 20-25% territory.

No, not really

Which parties other than AfS are below the threshold under "Other" and will get more than a non-negligible share of the vote? If there are none, AfS could be close to 3% in this poll.

Maybe the Pirates are still around?

Looking at the 2014 election, only the Pirates (0.43%) and a tiny party called "Unity" (0.1%) got above 0.1%. I guess all the random tiny parties might add up to an additional 0.5%.

So assuming they all stay at their 2014 levels AfS should be polling at 2.4%

Honestly, if pollsters are polling the Feminist party, there's no reason to poll AfS, which is probably around the same level as them

I believe there's some kind of Islamic party that could get a decent 1% of the vote from diehards. There's also an animal rights party, and that sort of single issue party often gets a surprising amount of votes (from people who are like "I don't like politics much and politicians are all crooks, but animals are cute I guess").

https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medborgerlig_samling_(2010-talet)

A new non-socialist is probably the party with the strongest support among the "others".

What is the difference between this party and the Liberals (or the Moderates, for that matter)?

If SAP do badly and if the rural/urban trends seen a lot nowadays manifest themselves in Sweden, could we see the solid red north of Sweden start to turn blue or yellow?

That is the region with the least immigrants and refugees, so it shouldn't be fertile ground for SD.

Of course you can decide what you feel is anti-semitic and what isn't, though Willy Silberstein (President of the Swedish Committee Against Anti-Semitism, 2009-2017) certainly didn't feel the same.
https://www.aftonbladet.se/debatt/a/21edj4/jo-bjorn-soder--jag-ar-bade-jude-och-svensk (https://www.aftonbladet.se/debatt/a/21edj4/jo-bjorn-soder--jag-ar-bade-jude-och-svensk)

It's also worth to note that Söder extended the same sentiment towards Tornedalians, which resulted in the Minister for Rural Affairs Sven-Erik Bucht (a Tornedalian) angrily calling out Söder's statement as "ing bullsh**t" (rough translation), and saying that he saw no problem at all with being both Swedish and Tornedalian. Söder once again doubled down on his original statement when responding to Bucht's comments.

This whole talk about "nations" seems to boil down to nothing more than ethnicity as a defining factor; those who Söder see as a part of the Swedish nation are those who are ethnically Swedish but what meaning does that actually have, perhaps beyond genetic markers which would purely be of scientific interest? If he just defines a Swede as someone who can be considered to be ethnically Swedish, thus meaning that no person with a background which isn't 100% ethnically Swedish could ever be considered Swedish, that's pretty much the textbook definition of racism.

Also, given that the Torne Valley has been a part of Sweden for at the very least 200 years longer than Scania (which Söder comes from), one could argue that any random Tornedalian is far more closer to being Swedish than Björn Söder could ever hope to be, going by his own logic.

In both the 2010 and 2014 elections the Sweden Democrats saw their largest increases in support in municipalities which had the largest unemployment figures, there were no real connection seen between a large number of immigrants/refugees and increased support for SD, so I wouldn't read too much into that.

That being said, in the north the Social Democratic and union organisations are generally stronger compared to the rest of the country, and class based/tribal voting is still far stronger than down south so I expect S to hold their ground up there, at least in this election. If anything, they should be real worried about losing votes to the Left Party instead, especially in places like Västernorrland where cuts to health care and hospitals by S-led county administrations have had a harsh impact.

So harsh in fact that Stefan Löfven was placed at the top of the Social Democratic list for the Riksdag in Västernorrland because the local party fears a total hammering due to cuts to maternity care at Sollefteå hospital.

SD also suffers up north because they still have so few competent local politicians that have managed to make a name for themselves, and they've also suffered from several defections during the term, as well as "empy chairs", where they've won seats on municipal councils but have been unable to fill them. One such example is from my own home town where they won two seats on the municipal council but both were left vacant from the start. Partly because they only had one (1) candidate on the ballot, and party because he was a resident of another municipality and thus couldn't take his seat. Eventually they managed to fill the seat for a few months or so, until the person they brought in just gave up and left. There are also numerous examples of local SD organisations failing to even present a budget proposal, which is one of the most basic duties that a party in the municipal council has. In the cases they do you end up with situations like in Luleå where the local SD chapter just straight up copied the budget proposal from the Sweden Democrats in Lund. That certainly caused a lot of confusion and laughs among the other parties, as you suddenly had SD council members of a northern town proposing significant investments in rural Scania.

Thank you for your elaborate response. I very much empathize with Silberstein's line of reasoning. The point about SD's background is less relevant to me (though obviously Ekström was a criminal and any foreign Waffen-SS volunteer returning to his country of origin should have been shot upon arrival), but I definitely understand it is painful for Swedish Jews to have their Swedishness questioned.

Using ethnicity as a defining factor does not necessarily mean one has to be 100% Swedish to be considered part of the Swedish nation, I think, and I don't think Söder is arguing this either. However, going into the specifics of this obviously gets extremely problematic, as you don't want to end up on your way to Nuremberg. But the idea of ethnicity being a relevant aspect (though not the only aspect, and not necessarily the decisive aspect) to one's national identity stands, I think.

This discussion does seem to be the consequence of Sweden's immigration policy, as a consequence of which the point where immigrants would be expected to fully integrate into Swedish society has long been passed and a community-based approach is adopted instead. Ordinary people are inevitably going to differentiate between Swedes and "foreigners with a Swedish passport" who do not adhere to Swedish cultural norms at all and might not even self-identify as Swedish. Then the question becomes: where do you draw the line? Who's in and who's out? Pretty pointless to start talking about Jews, Sami and Tornedalians in this context, though.

I assumed it would be different this time because it's the first election after the 2015 migrant crisis and the growth in SD's support is primarily a result of how that influenced Sweden .

MED is liberal-conservative but more fierce and sees them selves as the new and real opposition.

They have way fewer likes on Facebook than AfS (11k vs. 23k). Perhaps not a good metric to measure actual support (and I imagine quite some foreigners -- like me -- have liked their page, which will not be the case for MED), but it's almost solely Swedes liking and replying to their posts. It does seem as if there is some momentum here, and I think they might be doing better in the polls than MED too. Though SD's high polling numbers probably hurt AfS.

From my point of view this whole talk about Swedishness just seems like a waste of time. Instead of getting bogged down in vague cultural matters which would be incredibly difficult to legislate I just prefer this simple definition:

1) Do you have a Swedish citizenship?
-If yes:
2) Do you feel Swedish?
-If yes:
Then you are Swedish.

So for example this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Olof_Freudenthal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Olof_Freudenthal) wouldn't be Swedish by your definition.

Well no, he'd clearly be a Finland-Swede and they're a separate minority in their own right. Though a Finland-Swede with a Swedish citizenship who identifies as Swedish would definitely be both Swedish and Finland-Swedish. Just like a Finland-Swede with a Finnish citizenship who identifies as Finnish would be both Finnish and Finland-Swedish.

That's the only definition I can see as remotely reasonable from a legal standpoint.

I don't think this was a debate on legislation (which is also one of the reasons why it was unwise for Söder to speak out about it).

Freudenthal didn't identify as Finland-Swede, in fact much of his work was aimed at proving that Finland's Swedes weren't Finns (in ethnic sense) but part of Swedish nation.

To me it seems absurd to mix ethnicity with legal concept of citizenship and to deny someones ethnic identity just because they don't hold certain citizenship.

The Jewish/Sami issue makes an interesting point: whether you need to be ethnically identical to the majority to be Swedish. Should Swedish identity allow for subcultures within broader Swedish culture? The US's model would probably be one country/overall mainstream culture overlaying a mosaic of smaller subcultures and ethnic identites, all under the American umbrella. Another model, like France, would be all people regardless of ethnicity or background being (forced or otherwise) one national cultural identity, with little variation.

Red-Green government approval rating:

15% approve
66% disapprove

Top-5 campaign issues for voters:

52% Healthcare
49% Immigration/refugee policy
32% crime
26% integration
25% schools/university/education

Voting intention by gender:

Men

36.4% Sweden Democrats
19.0% Social Democrats
15.7% Moderate Party
  7.8% Left Party
  4.7% Center Party

Women

25.2% Social Democrats
19.8% Sweden Democrats
19.0% Moderate Party
11.0% Left Party
  9.7% Center Party

I know the election is roughly 2 months away... but i still think SD will end up between 20-25%... its whether or not they are the largest or second largest

I think there's a good enough chance they will slightly win the election, with some 25%.

The Social Democrats slightly behind at 24% or something and the Moderates down a bit more.

Swedish precedent would suggest the government makes up lost ground in the coming weeks, so I think they'll take a narrow first place. That said I wonder if this will ironically hurt the chance of a left government - if people tempted to lend a vote to MP to ensure they don't fall sub-threshold instead park their vote in SAP to stop SD declaring a symbolic "victory", we could see more wasted votes on the Left.

Why do you expect this election to follow the normal pattern?

Ehh ... you expect a government with a 15% approval rating to gain in the last two months ?

More like the opposite.

Naive belief in precedent: I admit it's not much though.

So long as you don't confuse tendencies with rules, then precedent is always something to bear in mind. Of course it isn't as if there's much uniformity with Swedish polling at present: different firms are showing strikingly divergent pictures.

Today some M politician admitted that the "Alliance is dead". Essentially, M and L will be the kingmakers. The red "bloc" -- or whatever is left of it -- might still become bigger than the dead Alliance, but neither will obviously come close to a majority. So M have to decide whether they are willing to form a government dependent on SD from the outside (or dependent on Center and some of the left-wing parties from the outside, which would be a redux of the current situation but with the "right" in power). L have to decide a) whether to cooperate with SD at all and b) whether to have an M-L govt or to support an M govt from the outside. The bigger SD become, the more difficult it will be to ignore them. It could get more messy and complicated if M+L+SD don't have a majority (assuming KD don't reach the threshold).

Do you think L will actually be able to wield that much influence on 4-5% of the vote?

Seems likely that M and SD alone will not have a majority, and assuming KD don't get in, L is the next likeliest party to change its mind on cooperation with SD, especially if a) M do it too and b) SD will not actually be in the government. Though of course it remains to be seen whether they are ready to cross that bridge.

Sex crimes increased 44-times in the past 42 years in Sweden ...

Development of reported sex attack cases in Sweden (1975-2017), according to the state BRA crime statistics:

1975: 500
1990: 1.200
2000: 3.500
2010: 7.000
2016: 20.300
2017: 22.000 (+8% in 1 year)

Among the 22.000 sex attack cases in 2017, there were a total of 7.230 rapes (+10% compared with 2016, when there were 6.567 rapes).

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-27/rape-case-surge-puts-focus-on-crime-as-swedish-election-looms

https://www.thelocal.se/20180118/reported-rapes-in-sweden-up-by-10-percent

I do wonder how many (marital) rapes committed by white Christian Swedes weren't reported in the 1970s/1980s because of shame or things like that. Still, a very worrisome development. Is this a huge issue in Swedish politics? When I read right-wing blogs (just for fun, don't judge lol) I always read horror stories about the situation in Swedish cities but is it considered a huge issue in Sweden? Do parties other than SD talk about it?

I think it's a mixture of both. It would be naive to deny the influence of immigration on such crimes, but I highly doubt there were only 500 sex attacks in the whole of Sweden in 1975.

Except that line of reported sex crimes goes from an exponential to a gradual increase. It is narrative claiming and just not good reporting.

What are you talking about? The 2010-16 increase is the fastest.

Sweden Democrats have been accepted into the European Conservatives and Reformists group at the European Parliament. Thus the party moves further toward the mainstream and away from the fringe; it's more difficult to label a sister party of the British Tories as far-right (though I'm sure people will try...).

I’m talking about in relation to the 1976 statistical note, if accounted then for Swedish law it is a huge increase, but not as much if counted for if you look at the American Metric, which is what Branson posted. Still a terrible thing that must be dealt with, no question. But using the Swedish data doesn’t look at how things are accounted for, each individual act of rape is recorded, while the American law accounts for more the perpetrator with time lapses. Just giving raw data without informing about Swedish law is misleading and that is what is wrong with that. So yes but my point still stands about needing subtext.

I agree with your main point. However, the Tories will be out, and ECR will probably be PiS-led from next year onwards, meaning the group will move to the right: the Tories were always the ones keeping it from becoming openly nationalist.

From a domestic perspective this is a very smart move by SD, as the association with EFDD could be an argument for other parties to portray them as extreme, and Swedes don't want to rock the boat. I don't think SD's position on the EU has actually changed, though.

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.

Probably the biggest and the most important from the point of view of EU is that ECR is not anti-EU group and they officially confirm their commitment to the EU idea, they just want a little bit less of that EU. EFDD and ENF group parties which are eurosceptic or even hostile to the idea of the EU. Differences between EFDD and ENF are mainly based on their member parties - they are both loose groupings without any strong institutional base - both of them might be stronger after 2019 or do not exist after 2019.

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.

Meanwhile, AfS have launched their campaign #enhalvmiljon, indicating the number of immigrants (half a million) they want out at the very least. 88.000 (makes you think) of them would be immigrants with Swedish citizenship.

I wouldn't be surprised if SD ends up joining the government.

Word is the Moderates and the Centre Party have openly discussed it and seem to be leaving the door open.

Neither the Moderates and absoloutley not the Centre party has opened that door. The former M party leader Anna Kinberg Batra tried to open that door, M then droped sharply in the opinion polls and Anna resigned.

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.

Any chance of a Swedexit referendum if the Sweden Democrats do better than expected.  Yes risky, but considering how close the British one was and how things haven't been going great, it might be a way to shut down the issue.  Other idea perhaps is for Sweden to remain in the EU, but leave the Scheghen Agreement (UK and Ireland are not part of it) and re-establish border controls although not sure what the public attitude is on this. 

If Sweden Democrats come in first, is convention they get first chance to try and form government (Off course they will fail) or does the king speak with all the parties and give the mandate to whomever he feels is most likely to form one as opposed to the largest party?

No. The Swedes are still supporting EU-membership 52 for and 18 against according to SCB. I do not think that SD will push for a refrendum they know they will loose.

Its the speaker who gives the mission to form the guvernment and he or she will give it to the party in the largedt coaliton. But first the current guvernment needs to fall and that is very possible.

I thought Eurosceptism was quite strong in Sweden?  Has Brexit led to a strong shift in the idea being a bad one as I heard in Denmark support for leaving EU dropped dramatically after Brexit negotiations got under way.  The odd thing is Brexit for all its woes hasn't been as bad as opponents said it would be, but it hasn't been smooth either like the supporters claimed.  I guess having someone drive around in a bus saying we send so much to the EU each week, lets spend on health care won't work as the 350 million pound bus was called out as a lie afterwards.

In 2001 it was 40-40 and before that more thought EU was a bad thing. The gap increseaed to 2010. The it has been stable. Sweden has to much to loose from leaving. All major companies are international.

You mean saying we see send 600 million SEK to Brussels every week lets spend it on health care instead (Adjusting for exchange rate and population) wouldn't work like the 350 million pound bus Boris Johnson rode around in.

Sweden has to much to loose. The Swedish export industry is strongly dependent on developments in Europe. In fact, almost three quarters of Sweden's goods exports go to Europe.

True enough. Does Sweden by chance have any papers like the Daily Mail, Express, or Sun which regularly engage in EU bashing (as I think that had an influence in UK so if you lack those might explain difference). Also what are the numbers like for those migrating from other EU member states as I believe with English being the most widely spoken foreign language (Regardless of legalities tough to live somewhere if you don't speak the language) so UK got an unusually high number of people from elsewhere in the EU thus leading to Brexit. If numbers smaller probably less of an issue.

The two largest "tabloids" i.e. evening papers are 1) Aftonbladet, socialdemocratic (very close to the party, almost like Pravda) and 2) Expressen, liberal

Although one off the largest morning papers Göteborgs-Posten has recently changed from social liberal to more conservative. I do not think that they will start bashing EU tough.

Even the Sweden Democrats are not completely for leaving the EU. It´s economic spokesperson Oscar Sjöstedt a few days ago wrote an article in Swedens largest business daily newspaper.


"DEBATE. It caused resurrection when Jimmie Åkesson said in Di that Sweden should leave the EU. The fact that the Swedish Democrats should act as endorsers to the outside world is nothing but horror propaganda from an increasingly desperate bourgeoisie, writes Oscar Sjöstedt, economics spokesman (SD).

The question of a Swedish EU membership is not on the table during a possible government debate this fall. That question shall not be decided by temporary parliamentary majority but shall be subject to a referendum. Therefore, the issue is also not central to this year's constituency, but since it has been woken up, I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on how we look at the matter.

Free trade and transparency in goods, services, capital and labor are favorable to Swedish industry. We want to work for more cooperation with countries both within and outside Europe to handle environmental issues, fight international crime and terrorism. The fact that the Swedish Democrats should act for endurance against the outside world is nothing but horror propaganda from an increasingly desperate bourgeoisie."

SD does want to hold a referendum, though, right? A sort of "Let's settle this once and for all"?

It is probably a mistake to compare current-day rape stats to ones in the 70s. The classification has changed since then for one thing.

It is however true that there has been a strong increase in sex crime in the last few years, especially for certain types (like gangrape) and it's also been shown that this is attributable to immigration (because nearly all the perpetrators are immigrants). It's an issue a lot of people care about, obviously and I suspect the general increase in crime in Sweden is driving a lot of SD's support.

Massive wildfires all over Sweden right now ...

Temps have been around 30°C or higher for several weeks now (also in Finland and Russia) and even in the Arctic.

But it turns out that even though 70% of Sweden is covered with forests, they hardly have any planes to combat wildfires with water.

Hopefully Austria will send some water bombers to Sweden soon to help out.

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Some "interesting" comments by FI candidate Oldoz Javidi, who thinks Israel should be ethnically cleansed of Jews, who, according to her, should move to the U.S. A very "anti-racist" party indeed ::) Perhaps they can merge with an organization with the same opinion of Jews. Nordic Resistance comes to mind. FI might come a little closer to reaching the electoral threshold if they do so.

I guess Sweden actually does have literal feminazis XD

New YouGov poll has the traditional parties S and M imploding and reaching all-time-lows (and the Social Democrats coalition partners, the Greens, are still below the 4% threshold):

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The S+Green government is very unpopular already and now even has to explain to voters why they are shoving billions of kronas down the throats of immigrants and trying to integrate them, while at the same time having purchased no (= zero) aircraft to combat the virulent wildfires in the country. There have been wildfires already in 2014, but the Red-Green government didn't buy anything in that regard.

It's better to spend the money on immigrants from Africa and the Middle-East of course ... ::)

(Apologies for the late reply)

Except I'm not trying to deny someone's ethnic identity, I was just making a point that an elected official and representative of Sweden (in his role as Deputy Speaker) like Björn Söder (who's statements the discussion was about) should not be concerned with any other definition of Swedishness than the purely legal one. Basing public policy on any vague definition beyond that is pure lunacy in my book, something which numerous politicians' obsessions with phrenology in the early parts of the 20th century definitively proved.

Other than that people are certainly free to identify as Swedish on an individual level if they wish to do so, even if they don't have a Swedish citizenship. For that matter Swedish citizens are certainly free to not identify as Swedish either, after all there are definitely several Sami and members of other minorities who feel that way, but again the point is that it is up to them alone to decide whether or not they identify as Swedish; not Björn Söder or anyone else.


Oh come on, Aftonbladet is no more of a Pravda to the Social Democrats than Expressen is to the Liberals or Svenska Dagbladet is to the Moderates. While LO may still own a tiny minority share of Aftonbladet, to insinuate that they have any direct control over the editorial process or any influence over the news published whilst comparing them to a party mouthpiece accomplishes nothing but showing off your own partisanship.


Fortunately she withdrew her candidacy after FI's leadership came out against her and urged her to step down. Even so I don't suspect that this will do much damage to FI either; they're so far down in the polls already that they'd be lucky to just hold on to their base. I'm guessing that they'll end up somewhere around 1% on election day.


Would you be so kind as to link to the parliamentary vote where MPs decided to cut back on emergency services in order to pay for immigration? If unable to do so, could you kindly point to some evidence of political parties pledging to invest more in emergency services rather than follow ideological commitments to either cut taxes or spend more on healthcare and aid to the unemployed, prior to the spike in migration in 2015?

Just because a certain cost could've been lower doesn't mean that politicians would've prioritized things that wouldn't have had a lot of political payoff at the time, compared to the ideological committments they were elected on. Difficult concept to grasp, I know. ::)

Though regarding aircraft for fighting fires, Sweden actually rented two such planes during the 1990s whilst evaluating them, but the investigator came to the conclusion that buying them and maintaining them on a regular basis would come at too high a cost to justify as major forest fires in Sweden were (and still are) relatively rare. Instead it was considered more cost effective to rely on European partners in the event of forest fires of that size. Not unreasonable considering that in the 2010s only this year and 2014 have had fires of such a magnitude that planes were required. However now the idea of Sweden, Norway and Finland jointly buying and maintaining such planes have been raised, most recently by the leaders of the three countries' Green parties, and that idea may be seen as more appealing by the penny pinchers at the Ministry of Finance.

The new Sentio poll still has the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD) ahead, but also shows strong gains for the far-left Left Party (V):

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Man if the liberals miss the threshold and the greens make it it would be a bad day for the alliance

Good to see that most of Center's virtual gains have evaporated. Also interesting - though not in a positive sense - that AfS could be around 1% only. This seems to be going nowhere.

Why is V gaining so much? Something with the fires?

AfS ... the Swedish version of our FLÖ-dwarfs (0.2% in the 2017 election vs. 26% for the FPÖ).

As for Vs strong performance in polls recently: I think it has to do with the massive unpopularity of the Red-Green government in Sweden.

Many of their disappointed voters from 2014 are now opting for the more radical fringes. See Austria in 2016 during the presidential election's first round.

It's crazy that there is still such a huge difference between online and phone polling, I mean, someone is going to end up with egg on their face

I'm 80% sure it will be the telephone pollsters who will end up with egg on their face ...

The extreme SD will do well, the extreme Left will do well.

All the establishment+government parties will face an utter disaster.

Here's a pretty useful image from pollofpolls.se

It showcases the systematic overestimation or underestimation of several parties from various pollsters, in comparison to the polling average.
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V has been slowly ticking upwards for several months now, due to various factors. Partly its due to the drop in the support for the Social Democrats, with the gains really taking off when S presented the strict immigration policy the party would run on back in early May. The failure of FI to take off has also mainly benefited V. However the party has been gaining slowly for the past few years, in thanks to the benefitial position of being an opposition party which can criticize the government, while at the same time negotiating the budget with the government and getting influence over policy.

V has been pretty good strategists in these negotiations as well, by pushing for some things which may not be that expensive (benefits for glasses for children, free public transport for teens during the summer, etc) but are easily understood by voters and easy to communicate for the party. They've been pretty good at taking credit for all the good, popular things in the budgets, whilst criticizing S and MP for the bad things and for saying no to their demands of higher taxes for the very rich.

Jonas Sjöstedt is also pretty charismatic by Swedish standards, coming across as a very sympathetic and likable person in interviews and TV appearances. He's definitely one of the best performing party leaders in debates as well, if not the best at times, which doesn't hurt either.

Do V aim to participate in government one day?

They definitely wish to participate in the government nowadays. Of course back in their communist days they weren't interested and even had it as official policy never to bring down a Social Democratic government even though the Social Democrats refused to negotiate with them over any policy matter, simply because the alternative was considered worse.

This started to change in the 1980s as the party moved in a more Eurocommunist direction, with the party changing its stance in practice for the first time in 1990 when they voted down the Carlsson government's "crisis package" meant to cool down the then-overheated Swedish economy with measures including wage freezes and a temporary ban on strikes which the Left couldn't stomach. Other measures in the package also angered the right, so this marked the first time ever that V (or Vpk as it was known back then) had voted to bring down a Social Democratic government together with the right.

After the 1994 election after they had dropped the communism from their name and their constitution, they got to participate in budget negotiations for the first time. Even though S dropped them for C later in the term, the dissatisfaction with the S government's budget cuts propelled them to their best result ever, with 12% of the vote in the 1998 election. Even so, afterwards there was never any talk of joining the government and the party quite happily settled for influence over the budget and other bills, knowing that their votes would be required in cases where the right was united and S would have to negotiate. The deal with S got a little closer after the 2002 election, though mostly as a result of demands from the Greens. When S were unwilling to give the Greens cabinet seats, they reached a deal wherein Green advisors would be given positions within the S government, and V demanded the same deal but were never a driving force in those negotiations.

The party's attitude to participating in a government changed a lot during the following years, with it at least being discussed during the 2006 election, and when the Social Democrats and the Greens formed an alliance in 2008 Lars Ohly and V were quick to go out and criticize them and demand to be included. Which they eventually were because of internal left-flank pressure within the Social Democrats against Mona Sahlin, demanding their inclusion. Of course the Red-Green coalition were unsuccessful in the 2010 election, but it opened the floodgates and now V are openly talking about participating in a government. Sjöstedt famously held a press conference whilst visibly angry and upset after the 2014 election when Stefan Löfven had point blank told him that they would not get cabinet seats. That year, for the first time ever, they didn't vote for a Social Democratic candidate for PM in parliament, but rather chose to abstain.

This election they're not placing as much emphasis on participating in government as they did in 2014, but it's no question that they want to do so. However the experience that they've seen the Greens undergo in government may have made them a little more wary, but under the right circumstances they would definitely go for it. Jonas Sjöstedt has even said that they would be willing to participate in (or work with) a government which included the Centre or Liberal parties, something which would be considered a complete impossibility only 10 years ago.

That agreement did not last even a full year. It was very unpopular with centre-right voters, especially M and KD voters, and it was abandoned after KD delegates voted against it at their party conference in 2015.

Basically, M and KD wants to take power with passive SD support regardless of what bloc becomes the biggest. C and L, who have a bigger aversion to SD, have said that they can accept this if the centre-right is the biggest bloc (this would be somewhat similar to the 2010-2014 period, except with a much stronger SD obviously). However, if the left become the biggest bloc they seem to lean towards some form of centrist government with the Social democrats, although nobody knows for sure. C in particular is very economically to the right these days, so cooperation with S is a bit difficult to imagine.

A group of "youths" torched dozens of cars in Gothenburg and other cities. At some places these "youths" also threw rocks at the firefighters.

Some parties seem to have two types of "sedlar", regional and local. How the seats are distributed between them?

Less than convincing effort from Isabella Lövin in SVT's program with Miljöpartiet. The moderators have had to repeat questions several times, because Lövin talks in boring platitudes without answering questions. She is completely without charisma, and doesn't even seem that convincing on policy details.

Is she the one who said people who shop in bulk should be hit with tax penalties?

You're referring to their traffic policy spokesperson Karin Svensson-Smith. And I don't Think that was exactly what was proposed it had to do with making parking by outlets and large shopping malls more expensive.

More crazy is probably her proposal now to replace half of Sweden's biggest highway with a railroad.

There are 3 elections concurrently in September, municipal, regional and national. So most parties will have 3 different lists at any given place.

I mean situation of Centre party, one for realm, one for region, in parlamentary elections.

e.g.

https://data.val.se/val/val2018/valsedlar/R/rvalkrets/07/valsedlar.html

It is funny, that you can swear in the election ticket (look at Skåne party)
.

Whatever you think of the Skåne party otherwise, you have to give them credit for creativity when it comes to their election list.

BTW, realized that no-one answered your question Ethelberth.

Most parties have a constituency list for their party (with local candidates to parliament) but some also have a national list. This first started to become a thing at the 2010 election (I think) when the moderates did it. The idea is that the national list can be used anywhere in the country for example by people who want to vote for the party leader but doesn't live in that person's constituency and by expats that vote from abroad.

As far as I know there is no actual limit to how many different lists you can register for a single party, but at the local and regional level some parties will also have lists with only young candidates or old candidates for example. 

I saw that AfS are telling their supporters to write in their party name on the ballot. I assume this means they didn't manage to get enough signatures to have official ballots for their party? (I know how the Swedish system of picking ballots of every party works)

Most likely coalition?

According to the latest Sentio poll, a Social Democrat-Green-Left-Centre coalition would have a majority. It could work, However I don't know if that would be compatible with Centre's current economic platform.

Wouldn't that probably just lead to the current Social Democrat-Green government going on, but with both Left and Centre external support?

Also, apparently today a news article came out saying that 58% of all rapes in Sweden are made by first generation inmigrants. 40% by inmigrants from Africa and the Middle East

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/granskning/ug/ny-kartlaggning-av-valdtaktsdomar-58-procent-av-de-domda-fodda-utomlands

I don't think this is particularly surprising but still, news articles like this probably help SD a lot I guess?

Speaking of which, it looks as if the SD bubble is bursting? That Sentio poll had them back behind SAP. For the first time since May as far as I can tell

Its bursting because SD is calling for an EU exit referendum and despite initial polls showing a drop in support because the idea is very unpopular in Sweden, he's continued to campaign on it. I guess he realized that even if he somehow outpaced the Social Democrats it would be meaningless since he will not be able to form any coalition. My guess is that rather than focusing on getting the first place he wants to build a long term euroskeptic movement which is dumb considering the problems that the UK have been getting since their referendum result.

I'm sorry, but WHAT?

SD's campaign is not focusing on leaving the European Union. Sure the party is officially for leaving the EU, which they always has been, but it's not something they actively campaign on. Åkesson said in June that he wants a referendum in the near future, but if that was the reason for their decline, they'd have started declining two months ago, not now when everybody has forgotten about it.

And the idea that Åkesson is trying to loose support on purpose is probably one of the most silly things I've read on Atlas, and that is saying something.

The reason they've dropped slightly is much more likely the result of that they've had a pretty silent campaign so far and that people are focusing more on who should be prime minister and that some of their voters thus turn to M and KD to ensure that Stefan Löfven is given the boot. The fact that they are climate change deniers when the environment has become the second most important issue   is also a much more likely reason.

SD will do very well in the election, no doubt. But it does seem like they peaked a little too early.

Either way, this shall be interesting to follow.

Another vague comment on polling, but there does seem to be a theme of SD and SAP underperforming with younger voters; and C plus the smaller left wing parties overperforming. Not surprising of course, but it does contrast with what other people have said in this thread about SD allegedly doing well with the youngs

It contrasts with your idea of the existential crisis of the centre-right, as the age profile of Social Democrats is distinctively old, moreso than their main opposition.

SD used to do well among younger voters but have gained a lot among older voters while I Think the current Young are more progressive. SAP is doing horribly outside of senior voters.


As regards AfS a new party is responsible for Printing and distributing their own ballots so they are unlikely to have enough party activists to get ballots to every polling station. Therefore you encourage people to use blank ballots which are Always made available.

This voting method is ridiculous. You basically have to take all the parties' ballots to the booth if you want to make sure no-one knows how you voted.

France has a similar system iirc.

So do The Gambia, but they use marbles, which is a cute idea.

Same here in Spain except it's even worse since large parties can afford to send ballots to every home so in the end a lot of people simply don't bother with small parties

The most noteworthy development right now, IMO, is a relative surge in support for the Christian Democrats during the election campaign. The party has consistently polled badly in the last few years, sometimes under 3%, and speculation has been rife that they would be leaving parliament after this election. But in the last couple of weeks their numbers have improved; in two polls released on friday, KD is well above 4%. Much of this is attributed to a debate held on 14th August in which party leader Ebba Busch Thor did well was was declared the winner by some. She has been consistently aknowledged as being charismatic and a good debater since she took over the party in 2015, but up until now this has not helped their electoral fortunes. Until perhaps now, that is.

I'm currently learning Swedish ... :)

Jag heter Tender och jag är från Österrike. Jag talar fortfarande dåligt svenska. Det är tidigt.

:( :P

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That will add to my Standard-German skills (my native language is Pinzgauerisch), English skills and Italian skills.

So let's get this straight one more time. The impression that I had, but I'm not sure if this is correct, is that if M+SD+KD+L = >50% of seats, an M minority government could be formed, sustained from the outside by L, KD and SD (in the sense that they wouldn't vote against the budget), and that M would take into account the policy preferences of these other parties. I realize that L and SD don't exactly like each other, but they don't have to be in a coalition with each other, they just need to tolerate the M govt.

If, however, these parties do not receive a majority... what happens? Does S get the initiative to form a government? How would that even work, if they would have to rely on both C and V? I realize this is unchartered territory, but I'm just thinking of the most likely course of action. How do Swedish analysts view this?

Also still astounded at the voting method in Sweden. Does nobody raise any environmental concerns with printing all these party-based ballots that are not going to be used? I really don't understand why they don't just have one ballot and let people tick a box to vote. I'm glad we do not use this system in the Netherlands - it would require half a rainforest to print the ballots with our number of parties.

The Greens have gone up a bit too and are now more securely above 4% - was this also to do with the debate?

Sorry if these questions have been addressed recently, but:

1. Why are SD and M falling?
2. Why are SAP rising?
3. Why are KD rising (above the threshold finally, I might add)?
4. Am I right to assume that a left-leaning government is more of a possibility than any other time within recent months?

Where can I find any information about the new municipal electoral system in Sweden?

They have introduced a 2% or 3% electoral threshold for municipal council elections.

So far, the Liberals are as clear as the Centre Party in rejecting a government based in anyway on the SD. The Moderates and Christian Democrats are slightly less hostile. Kristersson says the Moderates won't govern with or negotiate with Sweden Democrats, so he doesn't reject governing on their support. Busch Thor said the Christian Democrats could talk to Sweden Democrats, but not negotiate with them until the party was cleaned up (in terms of MPs deemed over the line). So theoretically a M-KD government supported by SD could be an option. But even in Sentio and YouGov polls, this majority rarely materializes. And even if it did, many in M and KD would still much prefer to go for some kind of Alliance government or even a cross-bloc government.

Most if not all of the Swedish parties would prefer to keep on pretending that the Sweden Democrats does not exist, and then let the biggest bloc between the Red-Greens and the Alliance govern, while the other bloc pretends to be in opposition. However, to their horror, the Alliance parties, KD and M in particular, realized that this was not really popular among members or voters. In the reverse scenario, Kristersson talks like he hopes that an Alliance government could rely on the Red Bloc not joining with SD to vote down his government. It is probably possible this could happen, but with Social Democrats putting all their focus on rejecting tax cuts and increasing welfare spending, they could hardly let an Allianse goverment rule without ensuring its wings were completely clipped. So there is probably a need for a more formalized cooperation or even coalition across the blocs this time. The Liberals talk positively about allowing a S-M government to be put in place. These three parties are close to a majority in the polling average and could perhaps be allowed by one additional small party. The distance between the two big parties economically seem so big that such a coalition would be painful.

You can see the most likely government according to Unibet below. Due to the economic difference between the two blocs, I think direct government cooperation across the blocs is less likely than (parts of) one bloc allowing the other bloc to govern in a very restricted way. What that restricted government would look like is hard to predict and somewhat depends on the election result. Allianse parties might demand a Social Democrat minority government where the "extreme" Greens and Left Party are kept away from government. The Social Democrats might not want to throw out any of the Allianse parties in particular, but would insist on very centrist budgets to allow such a government.

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No, that almost definately has to do with the abnormally warm summer we've had, with a severe drought that ruined farmers crops, and a very large number of forest fires back in July. Some of them very widespread. The Greens were able to fairly successfully tie this to climate change, which has seen their support go up.

Thank you for this clear response. The obvious problem for the (former) Alliance with the "let's keep pretending SD don't exist" strategy is, of course, that SD gain more from the Alliance than from the left. This means that as long as SD keep gaining (and this strategy seems like a surefire way to ensure this), every election it will become a little more difficult for the Alliance to win more seats than the Red-Green parties. Which means the Alliance would have to continue upholding S governments and bleeding votes to SD until they change their strategy. A grand coalition would also be a kneefall for SD given Sweden's tradition of bloc politics.

Tack. I was aware of the awful summer Sweden had had but didn't know how that had impacted on politics. Interesting.

1. M I feel is not running a very effective Campaign and they're a bit caught in the middle trying to appeal to people who are a bit anti-immigration. SD I suspect are losing a Little support because immigration is a bit less politically dominant recently compared to the last few years and other parties are communicating their shifts on immigration to the voters.

2. Are they really? I Think incumbent governments tend to gain a Little during the Campaign.

3. As was noted their leader has done well in debates and as a small opposition party they get a lot more visibility during the Campaign.

4. Depends on your definition of left-leaning. :P But yes it's looking a lot more likely that there is a Red-Green plurality over the Alliance at this Point.

---------------------------------

In response to the discussion on government formation, the key problem is that there is no government anyone wants that can command a majority. This means parties will have to strike very painful compromises. Because these are all so painful, they all are basically decisions that in the past would have been ruled out as impossible. Essentially, something traditionally thought of as impossible will have to happen but it's hard to say which impossible thing will actually occur.

2014 results, visualized by Henrik Lindberg

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Why the high C support on Gotland?

Farmers

Why are the Sweden Democrats so strong in Skane?

Also, it has always fascinated me how it is that Sweden may be one of the only countries in the industrialized world where the main metropolitan area (Stockholm) tends to be a bit of a right of centre stronghold. In almost every other country the main cities lean left compared to the rest of the country (e.g. London, Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Vienna etc... in Europe, but also Toronto, Montreal, vancouver, New York, LA, Chicago etc...)

This comes up every election, but the answer is mostly to do with the unusual pattern that industrialisation took in Sweden, with industry (and so the formation of working class identity etc) being concentrated mostly in small towns in the provinces.

The question's been asked before. (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=270508.0) Elswhere, it happens where incomes in the cities are much higher, or where there are very significant ethnic / linguistic regional divides.

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?

In Europe it's still a pretty new phenomenon. Paris used to be a bastion of the French right up until the 2000s, and many of the largest Italian cities typically voted to the right.

Worth pointing out that in 2014 the combined left actually did very slightly better in Stockholm city than the country as a whole, largely thanks to the "new" left parties FI or MP.

Stockholm county as a whole is a matter, in part because places like Danderyd fall outside the actual municipality.

Well, I'm not so sure. Here Madrid (both the city and the region) is certainly a traditional right wing stronghold while the left gets bad results there. Barcelona is indeed a left wing stronghold though).

Another counterexample might be Portugal, with at least the Lisbon constituency being fairly representative of the results in Portugal at large.

So while it's very common for the main city to lean left, it's far from a 100% consistent rule.

I guess Stockholm is quite a "bourguesie" city? In that it tends to support parties on the right a lot.

With the parliamentary elections not being the only elections were having in 13 days, I thought I'd post some municipal polls as well.

Starting off in my now former home, Novus has conducted a poll of the municipal election in Umeå, the largest city in northern Sweden.
Let's just say that the city didn't get the nickname "Red Umeå" for no reason. One might be tempted to see this as Jonas Sjöstedt-effect, given that Umeå is the home of the Left Party leader, but it's quite possible that it has more to do with local issues. From 2010 to 2014 the Social Democrats and Left held a majority on the council together, but in 2014 they went their separate ways and S formed a majority together with the Greens and the four Alliance parties. The Left has had a pretty benefitial position, being the biggest opposition party and was thus able to oppose unpopular policies like cuts to preschools and elderly care or the sale of 1600 municipal-owned flats (including student housing) to a Norwegian venture capitalist.

Also, given the new 3% threshold the three smallest parties would fail to get any seats according to this poll. Meaning that with the exit of the Worker's Party, Umeå won't have any trotskyists on its city council for the first time since 1998. 'Tis truly the end of an era.

Novus poll, Umeå municipal election
Social Democrats: 31.6% (-5.2)
Left: 18.8% (+5.7)
Moderate: 15.4% (-0.9)
Centre: 8.4% (+2.5)
Liberals: 7.5% (+1.4)
Sweden Democrats: 6.3% (+3.1)
Greens: 5.7% (-1.7)
Worker’s: 2.1% (-0.6)
Christian Democrats: 2.0% (-1.9)
Feminist Initiative: 1.2% (-2.7)

Meanwhile in my new home, Gothenburg, things are even weirder. Pretty much the entire political spectrum has been turned on its head by populist parties founded in opposition to the controversial railyway project Västlänken (the West Link) and the congestion charge implemented as part of an agreement in 2009 with the government to partially fund the West Link (and other parts of the West Swedish package, including new bridges and road tunnels), alongside money coming from the national budget.
The latest populist party, the Democrats, led and founded by former Moderate Martin Wannholt who was joined by a few Social Democrats and Greens who all had the common denominator of being held back from advancement in their own parties, currently looks like it's leading in the polls. However as the party didn't run in the 2014 election it has to both pay for ballots and be responsible for distributing them to the various polling places around the city, which could depress its numbers somewhat since it's likely they won't be able to get ballots to every polling station. Sure, people can write in the party if it's ballots aren't there, but there's a pretty good chance that some just wouldn't bother with that and just go for another party instead.

Sifo poll, Gothenburg municipal election
Democrats: 18.9% (new party)
Moderate: 16.7% (-5.6)
Left: 14.6% (+5.2)
Social Democrats: 14.2% (-8.2)
Sweden Democrats: 9.9% (+2.9)
Liberals: 6.8% (-1.3)
Greens: 5.6% (-5.1)
Centre: 4.2% (+2.0)
Feminist Initiative: 3.2% (-0.8 )
Vägvalet (Road Choice): 2.2% (-2.7)
Christian Democrats: 2.0% (-2.0)

Pro-West Link (Left, S+V+MP+FI): 37.6%
Pro-West Link (Right, M+L+C+KD): 29.7%
Anti-West Link (D+SD+VV): 31.0%

Also, since the last election Gothenburg has merged its four constituencies used for municipal elections into one city-wide constituency, meaning that the threshold is at 2% rather than 3, and VV and KD would therefore get in (if only barely) if these numbers were replicated on election day. A bare majority consisting of the Democrats, Moderates, Liberals, Centre, Road Choice and Christian Democrats would technically be possible under such circumstances. However considering that the Democrats raison d'etre is their opposition to the West Link, the question is how hell such a majority would solve the West Link issue when construction has already started and it's part of deal to get government funding for other important projects which are less controversial and desperately needed. So chaos it is, then.

Finally in Stockholm, things are looking somewhat more calm. The leftwing parties are going against historical trends by being stronger in Stockholm than the rest of the country (though not due to any strong performance from the Social Democrats), while if this result were to be replicated on election day the Moderates would get their worst municipal election result in 48 years in the nation's capital. Stockholm still has multiple constituencies, so the threshold is at 3%, but if the Feminist Initiative, Christian Democrats or both got slightly more on election day it could either mean a continued Red-Green-Pink majority or a slightly larger Alliance in a council with a Red-Green(-Pink) plurality.

Novus poll, Stockholm municipal election
Moderate: 22.1% (-5.1)
Social Democrats: 21.7% (-0.3)
Left: 13.1% (+4.2)
Greens: 11.1% (-3.2)
Liberals: 9.0% (+0.7)
Sweden Democrats: 8.3% (+3.1)
Centre: 7.3% (+2.6)
Feminist Initiative: 2.9% (-1.7)
Christian Democrats: 2.8% (-0.5)

I currently don't have any numbers for Malmö.

Novus poll, Malmö municipal election Published 2018-06-02
Social Democrats: 29,5% (-3,4)
Moderate: 22.6% (+0,6)
Sweden Democrats: 17,6% (+4,5)
Left: 11.1% (+2,6)
Liberals: 5.8% (+0.4)
Greens: 5,0% (-3.6)
Centre: 2.3% (+0.6)
Feminist Initiative: 2.2% (-1.0)
Christian Democrats: 1,3% (-0.5)
Others 2,5% (-0.5)

There is a 3%-threshold.

Left-Green-Pink 47,8 (-5,4)
The Alliance 32,0 (+1,1)
Sweden Democrats: 17,6% (+4,5)

A verk dirty Election so far....

https://www.ft.com/content/47b05d76-ad2e-11e8-94bd-cba20d67390c

So what's with the SD candidate(s) with a Nazi past?

Inizio polling.

Should your party be prepared to govern with support from Sweden Democrats?

72% Yes KD
64% Yes M
25% Yes L
08% Yes C

48% Yes All Allianse voters.

SVT picture of the results of the election compass. The fat circles are the official response of the party to the compass. The small dots are that of individual candidates. The compass if of course with the classic left-right economic scale, and the vertical scale is globalization/multiculturalism at top and the opposite at the bottom.

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Wait, so candidates can diverge publicly from the party? In a parliamentary system?

TV4/Sifo poll: "Which of the following parties do you not want see in a government after the election?"
Liberals: 12%
Centre: 14%
Moderate: 17%
Social Democrats: 19%
Christian Democrats: 27%
Left: 34%
Greens: 37%
Feminist Initiative: 46%
Sweden Democrats: 59%

This shows answers to an election compass, so some of it can be just the difference between agree and fully agree on a question. Once in parliament all MPs from a party generally vote the same way. But the picture shows how there is a relatively big range between MP/candidates from particularly Liberals and Center, who have some candidates who are very pro-migration and fairly close to the Greens.

You would instinctively think list MPs a la Sweden would be less inclined to rebel than directly elected ones - no personal vote

Yeah, I mean in general one of the big advantages of PR is that you get more coherent parties and thereby a more transparent party choice for voters. So there should be much less need for rebels. The effect is probably the strongest with closed lists. The Swedish system is semi-closed in that MPs are elected according to their list rank, but candidates who win 5% or more of a party's votes will break the list and get elected. Still it can happen, particularly with parties who are new in government it seems. Miljöpartiet/Greens had 4 rebel MPs, who voted against government line a few times. In the end, I think they weren't really part of the Green group anymore.

For the Sweden Democrats, the spread between phone pollsters (16-19%) and online pollsters (24-25) is pretty huge right now.

I wonder what this means in the end ...

Shy voters.

How do you mean? It's originally a Nazi organization so it's full of closet Nazis. This has been known for years, the media usually exposes a bunch of them at irregular intervals. The last batch has been pretty bad even by SD standards though.

In response to the previous discussion, Sweden is probably moving towards a more social issue driven political divide. I expect elements of the centre-right will eventually end up with the centre-left while the rest of the right joins with the far-right. But we're not there yet.

It looks like everyone is going to manage to stay in parliament, Red-Green get small plurality and then we get really messy government formation.

Agreed.

If the Left parties were to move to a more conservative stance on immigration/integration and such issues (that the majority of the population would probably support), they could stop the growing support for the right.

If they do nothing, they're just blowing up the bubble, which at some point will pop.

I mean, S in Denmark also did that and the DPP are just as powerful as ever.

I'll start with the predictions for Sunday:

23.6% Social Democrats (-7.4%)
21.4% Sweden Democrats (+8.5%)
17.0% Moderates (-6.3%)
11.5% Left (+5.8%)
  9.0% Centre (+2.9%)
  5.5% Christian Democrats (+0.9%)
  5.4% Liberals (n.c.)
  4.5% Greens (-2.4%)
  1.1% Feminist Initiative (-2.0%)
  1.0% Others (n.c.)

Turnout: 84.9% (-0.9%)

The eventual support for the SD is the hardest to predict, but I assume the following:

Usually, if the far-right party is bouncing around wildly in support in pre-election polls, it means they are having a really good election day result.

On the other hand, I do not expect the SD to do as well as the FPÖ in Austria (26%).

The polls have been quite accurate in Austria, the Netherlands and France last year - not so much in Italy though, where the support for Lega and M5S was underestimated.

Still, Sweden is closer to the Netherlands or France politically rather than Austria or Italy - so I guess they will do well and better than what the polls show, but not as well as the FPÖ.

21-22% looks like the most likely outcome, unless there's a hidden sentiment among voters like before the first round of the Austrian Presidential election, where the polls predicted 20-25% for Hofer (FPÖ), but he got 35%. Obviously, that was right after the migrant invasion of 2015. But Sweden also has its fair share of immigration-related problems, so a surprising win for the SD in the 25-28% range can also not be ruled out ...

SD 24, S 21, M 19, V 10, C 7, MP 5, L 5, KD 4, AfS 2.5, FI 2

Turnout 88%

incredible

It was almost 86% in 2014, and turnout went up by a lot in Austria, Germany and the Netherlands compared to the previous election. I think the turnout "ceiling" in Sweden has almost been reached, meaning that any increase will probably be less big, but in the current international and domestic political climate, 88% turnout in Sweden does not seem like a very strange prediction to me. Denmark tends to have about the same turnout as Sweden and reached 87.2% in 2011, before the refugee crisis and the Trump era.

I'm not sure if turnout can still rise on Sunday relative to the already high 86% from 2014 ...

I think in the case of Sweden, it might have peaked and is likely to fall a bit.

Sweden has naturalized a lot of migrants recently, and they are not as likely to vote as real Swedes.

https://www.thelocal.se/20180831/how-sweden-hopes-to-get-its-foreign-born-residents-to-vote

It would be a nice surprise though to see 87% or 88% turnout.

I agree with this prediction.

Oh no, I know, it's just a rather ironic number to choose. But I imagine you already know that.

If you're referring to that - yes, I know what the number stands for in Nazi circles, but I also think it's actually pretty normal to use it in contexts where it actually means what it means. Maybe it's me, but I don't tend to think of that number as a "code" for anything outside obvious Nazi contexts.

Given SD's past I think it would constitute a dark irony if an election where they topped the poll happened to have an 88% turnout. But my post was meant to be a throwaway giggle so this is really more explanation than it deserves at this point.

would be good if SD finished up with 14% though...

General summary of the polling situation...

SAP - between 22.1% and 26.5%, with most polls spreading pretty broadly between the two.
M - between 16.3% and 18.2%, with most polls showing about 17%.
SD - between 16.8% and 24.8%, with some very marked disagreements between polling firms. Most polls show high teens.
M - between 3.6% and 6.2%, with most polls showing around 5%.
C - between 6.0% and 9.6%, with most polls showing around 8%.
V - between 9.4% and 11.1%, with most polls spreading pretty broadly between the two.
L - between 4.9% and 6.8%, with most polls spreading pretty broadly between the two.
KD - between 4.8% and 7.0%, with most polls showing around 6%.

Almost all polls have shown an SAP lead (some quite large), and the exceptions have been within the MoE.

As for the two main party blocs:

Left - between 37.2% and 42.2%.
Bourgeois - between 34.4% and 39.9%.

All polls this month have had a Left lead, though sometimes within the MoE.

lol

I do not know much but my prediction

S    23.8
SD  20.1
M    16.7
V    10.1
C      8.4
L      6.0
KD   6.0
MP   5.8
FI    1.7
Oth  1.4

S+MP+V = 39.7
M+C+L+KD = 37.1

M under-performing to the benefit of SD.

S - 23.6%
SD - 22.1%
M - 17.9%
V - 9.1%
C - 7.1%
L - 5.9%
KD - 5.1%
MP - 5.0%
FI - 1.2%
Other - 2.0%

Turnout: 87.4%

S 27.0
SD 20.9
M 15.3
V 9.2
C 7.5
KD 7.4
L 6.0
MP 4.5
FI 0.7
AfS 0.2

I actually suspect S will overperform a bit off the back of people not wanting to see SD 'win'. C seem to me to be losing momentum while KD visibly have it. M will lose a lot of people to SD and return to Erlander-era numbers for the foreseeable future. AfS will get a derisory total and all the attention they got will look faintly silly.

The last party leader debate is on SVT1 now, the main state channel. Viewers who turned on their television 5 min early were treated to this interesting story: Ali Khalil, a Stockholm councillor for the Green Party, offered 3.000 votes from his muslim community to the Moderates if they agreed to approve a building license for a new mosque. The Moderates rejected the offer. Guessing this kind of story could almost matter as much as the debate itself

Panic in the Environmental Party: "We are below what the measurements show"

https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/samhalle/a/8w8J0Q/mps-panikplan-vi-ligger-lagre-an-vad-matningarna-visar

It seems MP is coming out with this just to make sure it can get last minute S tactical voting for MP to ensure a Center-Left plurality over the Center-Right bloc.

Everything was about Åkesson and Sweden Democrats in the debate. At several times, it became everybody against Åkesson, particularly on immigration. Even Busch Thor from the Christian Democrats, who is probably closest to SD, was eager to say that SD had the wrong rhetoric or policy even when she herself made basically the same points. Åkesson's toughest duels were with Sjöstedt from Left Party, and particularly Löof from the Centre Party. Lööf and Åkesson had several intense duels, and at one point Åkesson even told Lööf to tone down her anger. Probably good for both parties in terms of votes to gain attention for their clear points of view, but does make it very difficult to see a government that is dependent on both parties. The Liberals again rejected dealing with SD, and talked up the idea of a cross-block agreement (that they aren't necessarily a part of themselves).

PM Stefan Löfven was quite muted and didn't play that big of a role. He was quite clear on his repeated points, particularly against the Allianse's proposed tax cuts, but was also severely hounded on his record on migration and crime from both Åkessson and Kristersson.

One should always be careful in guessing which way the opinion polls can be wrong. But with SD's role as the only proper opposition party during the term (which Åkesson reminded people tonight), an election campaign with immigration as a big subject after an extremely huge immigration inflow , and a final debate which centered around SD, I would be quite amazed if SD only managed to progress from 13 to 17%. I am fully aware that even if many voters agree with their viewpoints, it takes time for voters to give up previous party loyalties and go to the SD. But if SD only go from 13 to 17%, as Sifo, Demoskop, SKOP, Ipsos and Inizio polls suggest, then that really is a missed opportunity of huge dimensions. In these circumstances, without polls, I would have guessed something more like a doubling from 13% to 26%.

While minority governments are not that uncommon in Sweden, I would not rule out, that the Center-party and the Liberals leave their bloc to form a majority government ( S+MP+L+C ), if they would have enough seats and the Moderates start thinking about forming a coalition with the Sweden Democrats.

The focus on SD should be fairly positive for SD.  Richard Nixon once said "If you ever hear of a group getting together to stop X, put your money on X."

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."

The Centre Party and the Liberal Party seem so similar in Sweden. Why don’t they just merge? What issues actually set them apart?

My updated prediction (tough race for 1st between S and SD):

22.6% Social Democrats (-8.4%)
22.4% Sweden Democrats (+9.5%)
17.5% Moderates (-5.8%)
11.0% Left (+5.3%)
  9.3% Centre (+3.2%)
  5.5% Christian Democrats (+0.9%)
  5.4% Liberals (n.c.)
  4.2% Greens (-2.7%)
  1.1% Feminist Initiative (-2.0%)
  1.0% Others (n.c.)

Turnout: 85.2% (-0.6%)

I'm generally agreeing, except with Left (will get less, too many spurous youth/student votes who don't vote at a high rate, the Norwegian Left party has plummeted on election day in almost every election for the past decade or longer) and with Moderates and Christian Democrats (will get more, because their voters are older and more affluent and always turn out at a super high rate, especially the super rich businness men of Moderates).

Compared to polls, I expect the biggest bumps to go to Sweden Democrats and then Moderates, while the biggest losers should be The Greens and then Left Party. That is always the case in Norway and our two countries are very similar after all. Although with some major differences too, which I've always found very fascinating. I've always felt more Swedish than Norwegian culturally and politically, though I'm 100% Norwegian genetically and a mix between Eastern and Western Norwegian, a big fault line in Norway both culturally, politically and geographically. Lol.

Turnout will be no more than 84% at most, very possibly lower. In Norway it's usually 76-78% and shrinking with almost every election.

Front page of newspapers today:
The left one: "Åkesson's rage against SVT after the debate:'A Scandal'. Dissociated themselves from the SD-leader in direct coverage."
The right one: "Anger towards SVT's statement against Åkesson. Program leader dissociated themselves from them in program after debate on immigration. SD demands apology.
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Prediction:

Social Democratic: 23.0%
Sweden Democrats: 19.5%
Moderate: 16.0%
Left: 11.0%
Centre: 8.0%
Liberals: 6.0%
Christian Democrats: 6.0%
Green: 5.5%

Coalition: Social Democratic-Green (Confidence & Supply: Left)

What's with the remaining 5% ?

Also: LOL at the continuation of Red-Green.

the continuation of Red-Green (+Left) is not unlikely at all.

My prediction

24.5% Social Democrats
22.0% Sweden Democrats
18.5% Moderates
  8.5% Left
  7.5% Centre
  6.0% Christian Democrats
  5.5% Liberals
  5.0% Greens

  Ok, I've got 15 dollars wagered to win about 10 that SD comes in second. Lets see if atlas conventional wisdom puts me in the profit.

23.0% Social Democrats
21.0% Sweden Democrats
17.5% Moderates
10.0% Left
8.0% Centre
6.5% Christian Democrats
6.0% Greens
5.5% Liberals
2.5% Others

Don't ask me what happens after this btw. Though I guess something like a continuation of the current government would be most likely since M+KD with SD outside support wouldn't have a majority and the centre-left would be bigger than the centre-right.

Some observations:

1. While the Sweden Democrats have become more normalized than before, there still is a taboo in confessing to vote for them (particularly given Swedish culture and mentality). This matters in telephone polls. Only the Sentio and YouGov polls are completely internet-based, and interestingly, they have much higher numbers for SD than the other polls. Sentio came closest to estimating SD's percentage of the vote correctly in 2014. There is no real reason to believe this is not the case this time.

2. SD have had a very solid campaign. No big gaffes in the last weeks, no truly shocking information that was revealed.

3. Immigration and crime by immigrants remain top concerns among Swedes, despite the establishment parties' push to talk about other issues.

Updated prediction:

Sweden Democrats 25%
Social Democrats 22%
Moderates 17%
Left 9%
Center 8%
Liberal 5%
Christian Democrats 5%
Greens 4%
AfS 2.5%
FI 1.5%

Red-Greens 35%
Alliance 35%

Turnout: 88%
Coalition: M, with explicit outside support from KD and L and tacit outside support from SD

Last time there was like a 2-3 point gap between the online and phone pollsters. This time it's been more like 5-6%. I don't know what to predict at this point, but I think a gap that substantial is going to be about far moer than just a "shy SD" effect.

I agree with David here ...

The SD should have a big day tomorrow, but I'm not sure if it will be enough for first place.

Still, I cannot imagine they will get a better result than the FPÖ.

I also agree that an M-led minority government, backed by KD and L and maybe the SD on some issues is much more likely than a continuation of Red-Green. If the recent years and events are any indicator, I think Swedish voters will liquidate Red-Green tomorrow.

Here's more about the last-minute Jimmie Åkesson / SVT spat and what it's all about:

During the final debate, Åkesson said the following: "Why do immigrants in Sweden have such a high unemployment rate ? Because they are not Swedish, they do not belong here. And because of that, nobody hires them."

... which caused the SVT TV channel to disassociate themselves (!) from his comments.

Not sure why a TV channel would have to disassociate from free speech or a debate comment by a major party leader. The comment wasn't even racist or particularly extremist. More like the plain truth. In fact, Sweden has one of the widest gaps among Western countries between the native Swedish unemployment rate (some 3-4%) and that of immigrants (some 15-20%). The overall unemployment rate is some 7% right now.

Ehm, he's the leader of a xenophobic party.

Should a Socialist politician not talk about Socialism, but instead talk about excessive capitalism ?

Should a Green Party politician talk about how to pollute the oceans with more plastic ?

A representative of the Danish public broadcaster DR said they would never make such a statement to dissociate themselves from a politician making such a statement.

My prediction:

Social Democrats - 24,8%
Sweden Democrats - 19,8%
Moderates - 17,7%
Left Party - 9,7%
Centre Party - 8,7%
Liberals - 6,1 %
Christian Democrats - 5,9%
Greens - 4,9%
Feminist Initiative - 0,9%

Others - 1,5%

Early voting is very popular in Sweden and "Radio Sweden" reports that until yesterday a new record has been set.

In 2014, about 42% voted before election day - a number that will be closer to 50% this year.

Btw, "Radio Sweden" has a few interesting English language contents such as the "Political Compass" where you can find out which party you are closest to:

https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=6981866

And interviews in English with each party leader:

https://sverigesradio.se/sida/gruppsida.aspx?programid=2054&grupp=27436

Your party sympathies in percent, based on your answers:

75% S
63% MP
59% FI
58% V

47% SD
46% M
39% C
39% L
35% KD

I was always going to do something like this, heh

V - 78%
FI - 78%
MP - 71%
S - 61%

KD - 30%
L - 25%
SD - 25%
C - 22%
M - 13%

Even though Jan Björklund is much less angry than Annie Lööf, then the words coming from his mouth are as negative towards SD as those from her. Björklund does emphasize the point about responsibility in terms of securing a stable new government, but I would still tend to put L and C in the same bucket and expect them to act in the same way. Also based on a strategic view, where they seem to appeal to many of the same voters despite the party histories being quite different.

If the Allianse parties get more seats than the Red-Greens parties, I think there is a good chance that an Allianse government with all four parties will be formed. In the party leader debate yesterday, this question was asked. The four Allianse parties AND the Left Party agreed that this should happen in such a scenario. Sjöstedt was quite clear that the "winning block" should form the government, so this suggests they might even lay their votes down. Löfven and Lövin did not agree to the same, but this mostly seemed to be bitterness about how the Allianse parties acted during the last four years. In the end, I think they could very well lay down their votes as well. SD said their vote in this scenario would come down to policy, but if all Red-Greens lay down their votes, then it doesn't matter.
If the Red-Green parties get more seats than the Allianse parties then the fun really begins. All Allianse parties, particularly M and KD, should be wary of just allowing Red-Greens to govern on for four more years without a majority. However, the political correctness in Sweden's political elite is so strong that I wouldn't rule out this happening in the end, particularly if the Red-Greens keep their cool and reject all centre-right governments in this scenario. There might be some tweaks and conditions, like keeping the Greens out of government or a demand that budgets should be made with the Allianse, but I can see it happen. And ultimatively the Allianse parties might all prefer this to some cross-bloc government, because they can easier keep their hands clean and it looks less like some very weird government just to keep SD out of influence. Also the Allianse parties can then postpone breaking up the Allianse, which they all seem quite attached to after the two terms governing together. If the Red-Green parties keep their cool and promises to vote down any centre-right government, then the only chance of such a government being formed is that the Allianse parties and SD makes an agreement. There is probably little possibility for an overlap where a government both includes C and L AND is palatable to SD. So it would likely be a M-KD government, perhaps a M government. Such a government should then find some middle way, particularly on immigration, that keeps both C+L and SD from voting them down. This should be quite hard with both SD and C making significant gains due to their clear and opposite views, but maybe it can be fudged. M-KD might hope that Social Democrats could offer to lay down their votes if they present a centrist economic programme and "mainstream toughish" on immigration, but again S should probably keep their cool and reject all centre-right governments in this scenario.

()


lol

There is a 1-minute video clip here at the top, that shows the incident. It can be seen in Denmark, so probably also in the rest of the World. https://www.svt.se/nyheter/svt-tar-avstand-till-akessons-kommentar-sd-starkt-kritiska

Precise description and translation:

We are on SVT1, around 10 minutes after the end of the debate. There have been a quick flash interview with all party leaders right after the debate, and now the host and two guests start to debate the debate, so they roll a clip, which is where the video starts.

Jimmie Åkesson: "If only the immigrants get jobs, then everything will solve itself". That is what all the others (pointing at other party leaders) have always said. But that still isn't happening. Therefore one must ask why it is so hard for these people to get a job. That is because these people are not Swedish. They don't fit into Sweden. It is obvious that it is then hard to get a job.

Annie Lööf interrupting: How can you talk in this way!?!?!

Jimmie Åkesson: It is obvious that it is then hard to get a job. You have to actually do what is required to become Swedish.

Clip ends, and we are back with the host and two guests.

Host says: We should start out by saying that Jimmie Åkesson's comments here were severely generalizing. SVT distances itself from this. (Turns towards one of the guests) Why does he express himself this way, Love (his actual name)?

Guest: The party has a very clear line, and normally expresses itself in this way, although they perhaps do not go this far always. They are very clear on their policies in this area, and they probably feel a need to go further. We can see that on migration policy, where they are now even against UN quota refugees. The party feels a need to go further since other parties have moved closer to and even taken over some of SD's policy positions.

()

Swing voter?

::)

They aren’t correct, the refugees can’t get jobs due to swedish law barring them to for recent arrivals. For long term unemployment there is the issue of the system in place dealing with people ravaged by war with language and skill barriers in the worst migration disaster since WWII

So, there are no integration issues whatsoever that are a part of the problem?

Don't you think someone who does not fully integrate into Swedish culture and does not learn the language bears part of the responsibility for the lack of opportunities?

Great analysis on the coalition formation, Diouf.

My result for the test:
SD 60%
M 54%
C 48%
S 47%
MP 46%
L 45%
KD 41%
V 39%
FI 34%

I got

SD - 72
L - 58
M - 55
S - 52
KD - 46
C - 46
V - 40
MP - 36
FI - 34

M 68%
SD 63%
S 62%
L 61%
KD 61%
C 61%
MP 49%
FI 34%
V 32%

SVT is dumping Eva Landahl, the editor who told the SVT host to make the comment about SD, for the election night coverage tomorrow. Newspaper Expressen revealed that she had liked Twitter comments that were critical of Sweden Democrats, including one very critical op-ed with the headline "Sweden Democrats is a completely unneccesary party". In the statement, it also says that "After discussions, we agree that it would have been better for viewers if we had handled Åkesson's comments in another way".

My prediction:

S: 23.5%
SD: 21%
M: 17.25%
V: 9.5%
C: 8.5%
KD: 6.25%
L: 5.75%
MP: 5.25%
Oth: 3%

S+MP(+V) : 38.25%
Alliance : 37.75%

S+C+L+MP : 43%
M+KD+SD : 44.5%

needed for majority: 48.5%

On that compass I got:
V 59%
S 59%
L 55%
MP 55%
C 54%
FI 49%
KD 47%
M 45%
SD 37%

Not too surprising at the top. I guess the most surprising thing is the big gap between C and M, since they both seem like centre-right parties.

I got what feels like a really strange result to me. Maybe because I emphasized "Sweden should join NATO" as a major issue?

KD: 65
MP: 65
FI: 63
V: 62
C: 55
S: 52
L: 48
M: 37
SD: 30

I thought KD was not all that distinguishable from M aside from being religious. And one of my major issues was ending religious free schools...

My result for the test (not really surprised; I guess I'd probably vote for S if I were Swedish)

S: 64%
FI: 57%
MP: 56%
V: 53%

SD: 49%
KD: 49%
M: 46%
C: 46%
L: 43%

I guess I would be a swing voter though.

()

C 76%
KD 72% (?!)
M 69%
L 63%
MP 47%
S 45%
SD 40%
V 38%
FI 33%

C:   79
KD: 77   
M:   70
L:    61
   
MP:  50
S:    49

SD:  46

FI:   42
V:    34

The English version of the test was really helpful, though on reflection I'm not sure who it was aimed at outside of Atlas types.

SD: 75
M: 72
L: 65
C: 55
KD: 46
S: 41
V: 30
MP: 24
FI: 22

()

How can they integrate if structurally they are barred from unemployment. With language it is a problem of lack of resources, the government can fix it by putting money into specialized classes for that. I’m just stating out that the logic of them not being Swedish is why they are not employed like regular Swedes is flawed thinking.

There's a big difference between DR and SVT.

SVT was fined by the Broadcasting Authority last year for failing to distance themselves from a similarly racist comment by another Sweden Democrat, Mattias Karlsson, made in a debate in Aktuellt. So with that in mind, it's understandable why they acted as they did on Friday, they simply want to avoid getting fined again.

SVT's broadcasting permit includes what is referred to as a "democracy paragraph", which reads roughly as follows: "[SVT] has an obligation to distance themselves from or respond to anti-democratic expressions and combat racial prejudice, violence and brutality"

How ridiculous is that ?? ??

Even "Radio Sweden", SVT's sister radio station, reports the following:



https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=99&artikel=7036815

So, "Radio Sweden" is allowed to post a full article stating the obvious facts on their website, but Jimmie Åkesson is not allowed to do so in a debate because of some dubious politically correct "democracy paragraph" ?

Btw, the polls are now open and close at 8pm local time (2pm Eastern).

Early voting:

2.75 million people have voted early vs. 2.67 million in 2014 and 2.38 million in 2010.

7.49 million people are eligible to vote vs. 7.33 million in 2014 and 7.12 million in 2010.

"They are not Swedish, they do not belong here"

There are no facts involved in that statement. It's racism, plain and simple.

Usually SD are good at hiding their racism in debates and speeches, but Åkesson really showed their true colours there.

Sorry, but that's what I wrote ... my Swedish (and that of Google Translate) is not that good yet.

Let's use Diouf's translation instead. I think he understands Swedish much better than I do:


"They don't fit into Sweden." is not the same as my faulty translation: "They do not belong."

What Åkesson says here is that a large number of immigrants have problems integrating into Swedish society because their culture is so different to the Swedish one, which creates all kinds of problems, incl. not being hired by Swedish companies.

That is something totally legitimate to say and is far from racist. Immigrants are not a race either. You should clearly be able to speak about these problems on SVT, without being disassociated. Why would a Swedish insurance company boss for example hire a Muslim immigrant from Somalia or Pakistan, who doesn't speak Swedish, wears a niqab at work and refuses to take it off ? Or a male one who refuses to speak or co-operate with the other sex because of his perverted religious views ?

I am Swedish, I watched the debate on friday and understood what he said perfectly well, so I don't need it explained to me by you or anyone else thank you very much.

He said that the reason immigrants don't get jobs is because they're not Swedish, because they don't belong. Then, when Annie Lööf and other party leaders reacted to his blatant racism he tried to walk it back by talking about language education and all that other stuff, but it doesn't change what he said.

Just like Mattias Karlsson's talk about "hundreds of thousands of rapists coming here" and Richard Jomshof's talk about how they have to moderate their rhetoric for the moment because "Sweden isn't Hungary - yet", it shows just what kind of party SD is.

While the SD's talk about immigrants often gets too excessive and extreme, in essence, he's right about what he says about many immigrants who recently arrived and how far removed they are from Swedish culture.

You are really disputing the fact that because of the 100.000s of additional immigrants from Africa and the Middle-East, rapes did not increase in Sweden by a lot ? You dispute the fact that immigrants from these areas now account for 80% of rape suspects these days ? You dispute the fact that these raped Swedish women would be un-raped now if these immigrants would have been kept out of the country in the first place ?

Please WAKE UP for once and stop tolerating these abuses to the Swedish people.

Apparently Swedish police does not keep stats on ethnicity and crime, so the claim of Tender Branson has a certain fake news flavour.

https://www.thelocal.se/20180508/why-sweden-doesnt-keep-stats-on-ethnic-background-and-crime


Please, please, please...

I actually prefer listening to researchers and experts rather than raving populists and racists. Like criminologists who actually who actually work with these issues and know far more about than some random guy on Twitter or a forum who seems to think that an opinion based on gut feelings and cherry-picked data is worth the same as an opinion based on years of peer-reviewed research.

I don't dispute that rape numbers in Sweden have gone up if you just look at raw statistics, and I don't dispute that there may be an overrepresentation of individuals with an immigrant background. However I also don't dispute the fact that the rape definition has been broadened at several points over the past 15 years which makes it far more difficult to get a true picture of the situation than you seem to think. I also don't dispute the fact that rape is one of the most underreported crimes in the world and a majority of rapes go unreported in every country in the world - but Sweden may be the furthest ahead in the share of reported rapes in part because of the broad definition but also due to an active political ambition over the past 30 years to reduce the number of rapes that go unreported.

I base this view on actually listening to experts, not by following alt-right "news" sites or opinionated people on Twitter. Which is why I'm also aware that there are a great deal of addittional factors than culture which influence why people commit rapes, murders or burglaries, such a socio-economic factors. But the far-right never seems interested in those.

I do dispute the attitude that you and others on the alt-right seem to have that rape is only an important issue when it's committed by immigrants. I don't hear you or others talk about the fact that the overwhelming majority of rapes are committed in someone's own home by someone the victims knows - most often their spouse. I only hear them care about rape victims when the man responsible is an immigrant - and in that case pretty much only when the rapist has another skin color, the don't seem to get too upset when a rape is committed by a Finnish or German immigrant.

I do dispute the fact that people like you or Jimmie Åkesson for that matter only seems to care about gender equality or women's rights when they see it as under attack by immigrants, but when it's an ethnically Swedish (or Austrian) man attacking those rights all I hear from your direction is silence. Or worse, the far-right are the ones attacking women's rights, just like SD are doing when they want to limit access to safe abortions.

I also dispute the idea of generalizing about entire groups of people because there exists a minority of criminals in that group - because every single nationality has criminals. It would be like me saying that every Austrian is a potential pedophile or every Finn is a potential knife-wielding murderer. It's crass, stupid and lowers the level of intellectual discourse to a moronically low level.

Please, for your own sake, stop talking about Sweden like you actually know anything about the situation in the country. Because every single post I've seen you make here makes it clear that you don't know anything.

"They are not Swedish" is a pretty factual statement for people who do not hold Swedish citizenship. For Åkesson, the idea that "they do not belong here" follows, which is indeed value-based: others may disagree. Every politician uses basic facts and, based on their values, draws certain conclusions from these facts that others might not necessarily follow. Politics is still about ideas, so "there are no facts involved here" doesn't necessarily tell us much about the value of a statement, unless people get their facts wrong (which Åkesson doesn't, even if you may disagree with him).

If I were Swedish, I would have been undecided between AfS and SD for a long time, but ultimately I'd go for SD and this comment would definitely have helped in making up my mind.

Yes, it is unfortunate that Swedish government try to cover over this problem by not making statistics on this very important area.
Luckily a few journalists have actually bothered to do this work in some areas.

For example the below research that shows, that of all sentenced for rape in Sweden between 2012 - 2017, 58% were born abroad. Quite a significant overrepresentation.

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/granskning/ug/ny-kartlaggning-av-valdtaktsdomar-58-procent-av-de-domda-fodda-utomlands

This clearly indicates to me that turnout will be lower this year. Early voting has hardly increased at all. There have been instances even when early voting has increased a lot, where the final turnout tally has decreased in the end. Also, because of the huge increase in the support for SD, there's not really any viable majority government in sight this time around, which could further suppress turnout. And there's just no way that any of the left parties will cooperate with SD at all, which means it's a foregone conclusion that the right side of the spectrum will win the election overwhelmingly (Alliance + SD), with something like a 15-20% margin over the three left parties.

Well, that's nothing new. Alliance + SD had a comfortable majority in 2014 too, but the Alliance still decided to squander it and allow the Red-Greens to completely ravage the country because of the SD scare. I suppose M won't allow this to happen again (never underestimate the center-right's lack of a backbone though), but an S-led government still seems like a real possibility to me. If the Red-Greens become bigger than the Alliance and S has something like a 5-point lead over M, which are both extremely likely, S may want to take the initiative to form a government.

To begin with, claiming that 80% of rap suspects are foreigners without statistical evidence is just propaganda. I think the reasons why that statistical data is no longer kept are pretty well explained in the article I linked. According the experts interviewed. the figures are pretty stable in the different researches made over the years, so maybe the importance of collecting that statistical data is relative. Anyway, despite data without elaboration can be manipulated for populist means, possibly it'd be better to have statistics. In any case the researches concluded that, while a vast majority of immigrants have no connection with crime, the risk is higher among people born outside the country. However, it seems that it diminishes with second generation immigrants. Factors like age, gender, income and level of education have to be measured as well. because in all likelihood they have an impact in crime rates. Finally, an interesting fact is mentioned in the article: according to UK police statistics show a disproportionate amount of ethnic minorities stopped ans searched by the police. Possibly black people in the USA would gave something to say on the matter. I mean, we are talking about complex issues that need a more nuanced approach than that of Breitbart News or Mr Akesson. I hope that Swedes don't forget where SD come from...  

Even if S does become the largest party, it will be really hard for them to claim legitimacy in order to form a government when their share of the vote will be the lowest they've registered in the ballot box since at least 1911, possible even further back than that.

My preferred government would be a majority one involving the three left parties plus liberal Folkpartiet, plus I guess either Centern or KD, though I really wouldn't mind a big coalition one in the spirit of Germany and The Netherlands involving Social Democrats and the Moderates, as long as the Moderate Party doesn't become the largest one. As we know from Norway and almost all other countries in the world, a modern day government lead by a conservative party means extreme slashing of taxes for the rich and as a result an enormous increase in the gap between rich and poor in the population overall. Basically a crime against humanity if you ask me, and a completely irresponsible policy idea.

The jokes about an S&M government write themselves. It is the Swedish people who will be hurt.

LOL, in what way? I realize that the two parties are way too far away from each other, especially on economic policy, that there's even a 1% chance of that to happen after this election, but at least it would create some kind of a semi stable government, something Sweden has been lacking recently. Swedish politics has been a complete chaos for the last decade or so. Chaos doesn't benefit anyone in my opinion, and it makes protest parties like SD so much stronger and more forceful as a result. (I realize you are a super strong supporter of SD, sadly. You can want a decrease in the number of newly arrived immigrants without having to destort into voting for a party with such a blatantly racist past, and even present with all the exclusions still going on till this day. I believe Moderates and KD have said they want fewer (new) immigrants and even the current S prime minister has been saying similar things. I believe it's a thing that is naturally going to happen no matter who ends up leading the government in the end.)

Well,
I think SD is going to deport a lot of migrants if they come to power, so there is a difference in terms of policies.
Additionnally, a M-SD govt isn't going to stop the rise of the SD, it's better them to join a rightwing government with vague measures to appease the psychological  phobias of their electors rather than ending up in a situation they will continue to rise.

::)

Holocaust, tax cuts. Tomayto tomahto.

My results:

MP: 71%
FI: 69%
V: 67%
S: 59%
L: 46%
C: 44%
KD: 38%
M: 37%
SD: 25%

Sounds almost 100% correct to me. I'm genuinely surprised that C scores so high and L so low though, but I realize that the Norwegian counterparts to these parties are quite different. Swedish C is much more moderate and less agrarian than the Norwegian one, while I suspect Swedish Liberals to be quite a bit to the right of the Norwegian one, even if even the Norwegian Liberals have been moving to the right for the last decade or two and now even is a part of our really quite far-right government. I always score really high with the Norwegian Liberals in Norwegian compasses, mostly because they value the environment higher than almost any other party, but also because they're the only right side party to truely value multiculturalism and all the good sides brought on by immigration, which is not often valued in political discussions sadly, since politics in its rawest sense is about fixing problems, not valuing all the positive aspects of one's culture.

Why are you bringing up holocaust? What on earth? How does that have anything to do with what I wrote?

You mean an M+S government. It's confusing even to me, as both parties in theory could be shortened to SD.

You called tax cuts for the rich a crime against humanity. The holocaust is a crime against humanity. Putting tax cuts in the same category as state sponsored genocide is a hyperbolic farce.

It depends on the size of the tax cuts. Unless you live in the US, tax cuts do not come alone, as politicians in most other countries are reasonably responsible and don't want to create too much of a deficit. That means, in most cases, cutting drastically in welfare programmes and help to the poor, which means poverty rising quite significantly. That's what I meant with crimes against humanity, not the tax cuts themselves. I'm sure that Bernie Sanders would not disagree with my assertion, and I think quite a lot of people, especially the poor, think and believe the same way. I believe the world has two main, existential challenges going forward over the next century or so. One is quite obvious one, dealing with the environment (plastic pollution, global warming, deforestation, desertification and overpopulation being the main threats) and the other one is the unspeakable, ludicrous income inequality in the world today, both between countries and within countries. Both are major crimes against humanity in my opinion. You and others are free to disagree.

Both of these major threats are the main culprits for creating refugees in today's world and both can very easily, and even likely, lead to war. Many scientists have for decades warned that water shortages in parts of the world, especially in the Middle East and Africa, could one day lead to a major regional war. This is just one of tens if not hundreds of examples of consequences from these two threats that could potentially lead to a war breaking out. If not wars are crimes against humanity, then certainly nothing is.

(Btw, it was not the tax cuts, but the income inequality that I meant was the crime against humanity. I guess I wasn't clear enough about that.)

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.

MP 79%
V 74%
FI 67%
S 65%
SD 36%
KD 32%
C 31%
M 29%
L 28%


I guess when you say high speed rail investment is a priority, you get the Greens as #1.

SD are the only party that seek to end mass immigration (i.e. the biggest threat to Jews in Sweden) and the most pro-Israeli party too. In other words, they are the most pro-Jewish party in Sweden. Whether or not there are some people in SD who have questionable views about Jews is irrelevant to me, as long as it is not part of representatives' official rhetoric.

Criticizing Soros is not necessarily antisemitic. Funny how people who defend Soros always play this card when it comes to Israel, but not when it comes to Soros.

How long the voting will last and are there any websites who shows results live?

Considering that in Sweden SD seems to be about as toxic as AfD in Germany, it's only fitting that a "grand coalition" would be the best exit.

Though the numbers don't fit for a grand coalition in Sweden, but Sweden is also not afraid of minority governments (unlike Germany) so it could work, or alternatively just bring C and L in.

Though IMO the best option would be for whichever party has the most seats (in this case probably S, but possibly SD) to form a minority government by default. And if the rest want to bring them down, just have a no confidence vote with a viable majority government.

Yes, that is much more interesting than a discussion on who is a crypto-antisemite.  Anyway I think exit polls come out at 2PM EST.

I found this line to results
https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/wEGeKP

Hopefully
https://www.svt.se/

will have live stream

That would be why an organisation that can do something about it, like, say, the EU, would be a good thing...

Again, bad policy, even terrible policy (in your opinion) =/= state sponsored genocide. To put them in the same category  trivializes the term.


As an aside, I have been criticizing Soros for years and only became aware of his Judaism in like 2017. Guess I'm a raging anti-semite. You should probably stop associating with me :P

The problem is that Centre and Liberal voters don't want this (according to Ipsos). Just 25% of Liberal voters want co-operation with Sweden Democrats, the figure for Centre voters is even lower - 8%. Although 64% of Moderate voters and 72% of Christian Democrat voters are in favour - but there is currently no M-SD-KD majority.

I notice the foreign media are already shilling hard against Sweden Democrats. I think the debate where the SVT unnecessarily intervened and literally all parties being against SD will work in SD's favor. I think it will be close between SD and S maybe least than a point.

I agree, and I believe there are three ways to remedy this. Either by raising taxes on the rich incrementially and over a period of time, instead of doubling them one day to the next for instance. Another way is to raise taxes on luxury items, everything from cars and flights to certain types of unhealthy and environmentally-hostile meat. A third is to work across borders, to strife for a more supranational world. EU has started the process of harmonizing taxes already I believe, let's hope they'll have some success with it. Preferably you should do all three at the same time.

There's a live stream you can follow here: https://www.nrk.no/nyheter/valg-i-sverige-1.11200732

Actually, probably a bit late to be saying this. But it's interesting that most people seem to have predicted SD getting something in the low 20s, when that is pretty much the only score the pollsters haven't been predicting.

Mostly, the phone ones have had them in the high teens; while YouGov and Senitio have had them around 25%. So you might have though that 20-22% would be the one score SD don't get.

I think that is more about SD over-performed their pre-election polls in 2014 by around 2.5% so if you add in that amount to SD's average polling last couple of days you get the low 20s.

I think SD will get between 20% and 25%. I think there's about a 40% chance that they'll become the biggest party.

On Betfair the odds of SD being the largest party is 3/3.15 which implies that it is around a 1 in 3 shot.

Why the hell Norwegian tv streams Swedish tv?

Cause we're crazy about Sweden, we even have a joint talk show which has run in both countries for more than ten years now, and before that for about ten years in Norway only hehe. We used to be one country until 1905, we have the same viking heritage, our languages are just slight variations of each other, our cultures are very similar. Also, until we found oil in the 1970s, Norwegians considered themselves Sweden's little brothers and most Norwegians loved watching Swedish TV, including children's programming. It was almost as popular as our own programming. Today of course, Sweden has become our little brothers in many respects, at least economically. As a result, Swedes have poured into our country during the past 15-20 years. Besides Poles, Swedes are our biggest immigrant work force due to our wages being 40% higher and our unemployment almost only half of that in Sweden.

PS: This is only a live stream for the election day broadcast, so it happens at most one day every four years hehe. I'm not sure if this is the first election day live stream or if they've done it for previous elections as well.

Note that in 2014, the exit polls were not correct: just like the pre-election polls, they underestimated the SD by about 3%.

So, it's better to wait for the real results that are coming in instead of hyping the exit polls.

The level of analysis in this thread through the campaign has been really low - everyone insisting that whatever they wish to be so is an iron rule, when the reality is that things are quite uncertain. There are a lot of variables, there is a lot of information we don't have and the precedents to make assumptions on aren't fantastic. Would be nice if people were to raise their games slightly when the actual results come in.

You would think the exit pollsters might have learned a lesson from 2014 and adjusted their methodology.  In fact if they did there is as much risk they over-adjusted for the shy SD effect.  

Well, less than 3% is considered as accepted statistical error in polls so all but Novus got SD result right.

What exactly are you getting at here? Can you be more specific?

I don't think there's a tradition among Scandinavian pollsters to adjust their methodology after elections in order to adjust to the election outcome, like it has been in the US and to a lesser extent perhaps in the UK. One reason might be because pollsters' predictions in Denmark, Sweden and Norway traditionally have been surprisingly accurate, although there always are a couple of parties whose support is off with a couple of percentage points or so. It's usually within 3 percentage points of where pollsters end up landing though.

This time however, we have seen a record high difference when it comes to internet polls such a YouGov and more traditional phone pollsters, especially regarding SD (where the difference has been up to 9-10% at most), but also to a large degree with S and M. So perhaps things will change after this election, if YouGov's numbers will come really close to the actual results.

Will V participate in minority government with SAP and MP if there will be only such option and Alliansen minority cabinet after elections?

They have, here (https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/val-2018/sa-ska-svt-och-tv4-undvika-nytt-sd-fiasko/) is a Swedish news article about Exit pollsters having adjusted their methodology this year in order for them trying not too underestimate SD again.

Sweden Democrats leader Åkesson receives death threat: party

https://www.thelocal.se/20180908/sweden-democrats-leader-kesson-receives-death-threat-party

This seems to be from Islamic State

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The letter reads

‘We will behead you if you do not withdraw from the election by the end of this week"

Perhaps IS is working secretly with SD ?  This will only push up the SD vote.

Early voting data:

Until the moment, 2,726,338 voters cast an early ballot. The number could still increase. Here's the early votes numbers by district and compared with 2014:

()

SAP minority government, which would offer more leeway for Löfven, would probably be likelier in that case.

This could very well be fake, even produced within SD itself. Another and likely possibility is that it's genuine, as it has been obvious more or less since IS was created that there's nothing else they'd rather want than a clash or war between sivilisations, as that will only increase the support for IS. It's in both IS and SD's own interests to heighten this conflict, sadly. It's a win-win for both, and thus a loss for everyone else, the huge silent majority. Honestly, the media should not be reporting on this, just like satellite channels should not have live-streamed every single Trump rally during the 2015 an 2016 election campaign like they did. If we don't want a tabloid society based on fake stories and made up controversies, we should find a way to reduce this kind of journalism, even through laws if that becomes the only viable solution in the end. Even freedom of speech should have limits when it comes to hate rhetoric and hate propaganda. In this case, the hate propanganda is either a joint effort from both SD and IS, or, just as likely, if not more, a hoax perpetrated by SD alone in order to gin up anger and get their voters to the polls.

We can see from these numbers that early voting is up strongly where SD has traditionally had the most support, particularily in Skåne, while surprisingly it has substantially decreased in the regions where SD has had almost no support at all, mainly in the north of Sweden. This should be a huge worrying and warning sign for everyone who doesn't want SD to have a huge election night. If election day voting will look even remotely like this, I think it's almost a foregone conclusion that SD will become the largest party. However that is a big if of course.

Racist.

What?

Do you know anything about Norway and Sweden in order to have an opinion? The question from the Polish user was why on earth Norway would live-stream the election coverage of another national broadcaster. I tried to give him a qualified reasoning for why that would be the case, as even I find it slightly odd and certainly a novelty. How does that make me a racist? If I'm such a racist, why would I have spent my entire life to fight racism?

Let’s go Swedish Democrats!

It’s bit of a mixed bag but these figures seem broadly in line with what you might expect from the changes in party support since 2014 based on the polls. S areas generally taking the biggest hit, M a bit of both, and SD areas generally over performing. I think it really depends how many of those new voters in some more M leaning counties are voting SD.

Your exclusionary language discriminates against millions of Swedes and Nords who have no Viking heritage and do not partake in the native culture.

Can we not do this?

I don't come here to watch 5 year old Americans farting at each other

The question was what made Sweden and Norway so close that we would live-stream a foreign broadcaster. To ignore the common history of more than a 1,000 years then makes no sense.

And on a forum full of privileged white males like yourself, you can probably get away with that kind of self-centerdness (unfortunately). But it’s always preferable to practice sensitivity.

Jimmie Åkesson (SD) just told reporters "he feels very optimistic about today and expects up to 30% of the vote."

Whatever this means ...

Would be pretty amazing if SD ends up in the upper 20s. Not sure if it will happen

Do we have any provisional turnout figures?