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

[Tintrlvr]

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

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...

[Tintrlvr]

Demographic breakdowns: https://www.svt.se/special/valu2018-valjargrupper/

Results by bloc by age:
65+: Red Green 42; Alliance 38; SD 19
31-64: Red Green 38; Alliance 40; SD 21
22-30: Red Green 41; Alliance 42; SD 14
18-21: Red Green 38; Alliance 45; SD 13
Total: Red Green 41; Alliance 41; SD 18

Also the Moderates won voters between ages 18-21 outright. Why does Sweden have the really odd pattern where support for bourgeois parties is correlated with youth of all things? Most every country is the opposite.

It's not an odd pattern - in continental Europe this is a common feature (although most common for traditional centre-left support to be positively correlated with age, and not necessarily the centre-right inversely).

Left being strongest amongst younger voters seems to be more a thing in the English speaking world but less so outside.  True far left parties do better amongst younger voters, but many right wing also do well also.  Even in Asia, parties on the right do better amongst younger voters so idea of young favouring left wing parties seems to be largely limited to English speaking countries excluding Ireland (Canada, US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand, UK the most extreme example of all them).

Also wasn't always that way in English speaking world.  In both Canada and the US, at least parties on the right did quite well amongst Generation X when they were in their 20s, while its more amongst millennials they've struggled so could be that usually children vote differently than their parent's generation did.

I don't know that I'd say it's most true in the UK. It's a relatively recent phenomenon everywhere, but there are clear elections where the pattern started (2004 Presidential election in the US, 2016 Brexit referendum in the UK), and the UK example is much more recent. US vs. UK age gaps also seem to be similar (though it is true that the age gap in the US is partially a gap in race/ethnicity among young voters as compared to older voters - I suspect that's also true to some extent in the UK but perhaps to a lesser degree).

Anyway, totally agree that more or less no real age gap, or S in particular doing best among older voters, is not very surprising. (I'd be shocked if MP did best among older voters, though!) My understanding is that, outside of the Anglophone countries, it's a combination of traditional favoring of social democratic policies by older voters combined with a view that the left are the guardians of elder-care and social safety net for the elderly policies.

[Tintrlvr]

I mean, in theory a new election could produce an Alliance plurality in which case they would just form a government I Think.

First round of speaker talks are happening today. No one seems to be budging yet.

Have there been any polls indicating which way the public might be leaning if there were another election?

[Tintrlvr]

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

I assume S+M+one of the small parties is out of the question?

My understanding is that M is the most right-wing member of the Alliance, so this is not realistic. Even KD would be more likely to work with S. (Which does raise the question of whether S+C+L+KD is possible, but also seems far-fetched to me.)

[Tintrlvr]

The policy gap can't be bridged. One or both parties would have to sell out completely.

Lööf wouldn't have to violate any stated principle at all actually. All she'd have to do is to not vote against a government led by her PM candidate and that does not cooperate with SD. That seems like an easier pill to swallow, IMO.

It seems Sweden lacks genuinely centrist parties. The so-called Centre Party is more right wing than your Conservatives on labour market issues and many economic issues, the Liberals are also right wing on labour market and taxes, the Christian Democrats have moved from being centrist to more Conservative than the Conservatives, and your Greens seem very watermelon-ish. So there aren't really any parties in between the Social Democrats and the Conservatives. Is that correct?

If you're talking strictly economics, I think MP, KD and SD are all somewhere between S and M (MP closer to S, KD and SD more nebulous). But they are obviously each far from the center on other, non-economic issues, and those non-economic issues are their flagship issues, so there's no generally centrist party that can work with both the right and left blocs. C used to be that party but has become libertarian-light in recent years (although its voter base is probably still the most classically "centrist" and wouldn't punish the party for supporting the left).