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

[jaichind]

If anyone cares apparently this site has a results map

https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/wEGeKP

I think that site is slower than the official results page.

[jaichind]

M seems to be over-performing, V and SD seem to be under-performing.

[jaichind]

I very much enjoy the game.

Yes, in fact that is why the Brazil way of counting votes really sucks.  They count almost 90% of the result and then release it all at once.  They are taking all the fun out of it.

[jaichind]

It seems that S and M are doing better than expected.  I assume this is due to tactical voting to stop SD from being first or second largest party.  SD itself is also not doing as well as it would hope.

[jaichind]

The current count implies the most tiny of leads for the Center-Left bloc with SD most likely around 17.5%-18%.  

[jaichind]

The count seems to be getting more favorable for S as time goes on on a relative to 2014 basis.

[jaichind]

It seems more and more likely that the Center-Left bloc will emerge slightly bigger than the Center-Right bloc. 

[jaichind]

FI seems to have crashed to 0.5% which gives an extra 2.5% pool of votes to augment the Center-Left bloc tally.

[jaichind]

For those who are convinced this result will mean a Löfven reelection, I would recommend betting right now. Kristersson is quite clear favourite to become PM most places. At Unibet he is only at 1.35 now. Again, I'm not ruling out it could end with Löfven, but it would stride against what the Allianse parties have said during the campaign

But if the Center-Left bloc emerge larger, even slightly, I do not see a path to a Center-Right government given how certain Center-Right parties feel about working with SD.

[jaichind]

It seems the vote count is pretty consistent with a Center-Left bloc lead over the Center-Right bloc lead of around 0.5%.    I guess Löfven is back in.  But that just means the next election MP might fall below 4%.

[jaichind]

Back to Center-Left 144 Center-Right 143 SD 62 with 2 precincts outstanding.    I guess there are some room for the Center-Right to gain enough votes in the absentee ballots to draw to a tie with Center-Left.

[jaichind]

I am curious what the impact of SD's growth from 2014 has on the dynamics of government formation.  Meaning, in theory, if SD's vote share in 2018 stayed the same as 2014 but still with the two blocs (Red-Green and Alliance) at a virtual tie, would not the difficulties in government formation be the same as today ?

I am curious because all sorts of non-Swedish news headlines all speak have something like "Populist Right SD surge upends Swedish government formation."  But to me the real problem here is not that SD vote share grew but the two blocs in contention for power are at a near tie which would be a problem no matter what if SD held the balance of power.   In 2014 the Red-Green bloc was clearly bigger so it made sense that power followed to them.  Now the the two blocs are at near parity and there is the issue of the ruling bloc losing votes/seats from 2014 which creates an image of "government of losers" if the continued.  That seems to me the crisis and not the SD surge.  Now if SD where to go above 20% and come in second or even first then that would be a different story.

Any insight that I am missing about the dynamics of government formation ?

[jaichind]

The tie between the blocs isn't super relevant. All the opposition parties campaigned explicitly on rejecting the sitting government. And the government lost 40-60 which is a landslide.

SD upsets government formation because they are willing to topple governments in order to gain influence.

The reason I Think my option B is the most likely is that it has the strongest math. Sure, neither S nor SD want it but what can they do? It's not like they can provide a stronger government alternative. What SD has said is that they can't accept a government where C rules the immigration policy (or something like that). I expect C won't have much influence on an Alliance immigration policy.

But what you are saying that most reasonable outcomes of this election would have led to a crisis.  Because is seems no matter what the level of support SD might have the following equation would be true

ABS[Red-Green minus Alliance] < SD

Even if Red-Green beat Alliance by, say a solid 5%, we can reasonable expect even a bad election night for SD would see SD at above 5%.  The same would be true if it was the other way around.

It seems to me which bloc is bigger would make a big difference.  Either
a) Someone makes a deal with SD to abstain  OR
b) Someone makes a deal with SD for a positive vote
c) Some sort of anti-SD grand alliance

b) Seems hard and would lead to all sorts of problems.  But the "someone" that can pull off a) would be for naught if the other non-SD bloc can outvote you.

If c) is the way to go then the large bloc can make the claim that it should form the government with outside support from the losing bloc which is what seems to have taken place in 2014.

What would be funny is if the absentee vote leads to the two blocs to be at an exact tie.

[jaichind]

Any news on the final election results? Wan't today the day that the last votes from abroad etc... were supposed to tallied and added in?

it seems the first re-count flipped on seat from SD to C so we are back to 144-143 lead for Center-Left bloc.

[jaichind]

How will the vote work?   

So we have S (100) and MP (16)  vote for Löfven right? 
And we know that M(70), SD(62), and KD(22) will vote against. 
I read that C(31) will abstain. 
Will L(20) vote for Löfven  or abstain ? 
It seems for the math to work Löfven then Löfven will still be outvoted by M+SD+KD unless C or L can vote for Löfven AND V(28) votes for Löfven with V being a big unknown right now.

If so what is the point of C abstaining?  If they are going to take the "hit" of backing Löfven they might as well have it win a majority and go on to rule.  They they abstain and Löfven goes down would they not get blamed from both sides and lose votes to both sides ?

[jaichind]

How will the vote work?  

So we have S (100) and MP (16)  vote for Löfven right?  
And we know that M(70), SD(62), and KD(22) will vote against.  
I read that C(31) will abstain.  
Will L(20) vote for Löfven  or abstain ?  
It seems for the math to work Löfven then Löfven will still be outvoted by M+SD+KD unless C or L can vote for Löfven AND V(28) votes for Löfven with V being a big unknown right now.

If so what is the point of C abstaining?  If they are going to take the "hit" of backing Löfven they might as well have it win a majority and go on to rule.  They they abstain and Löfven goes down would they not get blamed from both sides and lose votes to both sides ?

Abstaining from the vote is in practice a yes vote as government only needs to not have (absolute) majority voting against it.

Ah.  Got it.  Thanks for this.