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

[Gustaf]

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.

[Gustaf]

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.

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

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.

[Gustaf]

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.

[Gustaf]

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).

[Gustaf]

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.

[Gustaf]

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

[Gustaf]

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.

[Gustaf]

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.

[Gustaf]

AfS are Nazis so they probably want Jews to be dead. Hardly surprising David B would be a fan of theirs.

...

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

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

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.

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 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.

[Gustaf]

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.

[Gustaf]

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.

[Gustaf]

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.

[Gustaf]

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).

[Gustaf]

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.

[Gustaf]

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?

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.

[Gustaf]

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.

[Gustaf]

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.

[Gustaf]

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.

[Gustaf]

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.

[Gustaf]

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.

[Gustaf]

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?

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. But yes it's looking a lot more likely that there is a Red-Green plurality over the Alliance at this Point.

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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.

[Gustaf]

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

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.

[Gustaf]

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.

[Gustaf]

Jesus, a lot of awful hot takes in this thread. To clear up a few things:

1. Youth vote in Sweden has no clear profile over time, it swings a lot and I Think is often anti-incumbent. A win of this size for the centre-right in the Group is still somewhat surprising to me.

2. There has been tons of misinformation and confusion not just here but also in the media at large about what is likely to happen with government formation. To be clear, the current government is not surviving. Like, that is certain and it does not matter at all whether the Red-Green ends up the bigger bloc or not. And SD will not be part of the government. There are 3 broad possibilities on the table:

A) S remains in power, drops the Greens and rules either outright together with or with support from C and L, or some combo that includes the Greens or other centre-right parties. V cannot be part of such an agreement because the centre-right wouldn't accept it. This is Löfven's preferred option. It is not something any other party wants though, especially because ruling with S has historically been brutal for a right-wing party.

B) The Alliance forms a government. This is the Alliance's preferred option. Their calculation is that when push comes to shove SD would vote for them over the Red-Greens so they can force Löfven's hand and make S support them from the outside. S of course do not want this because accepting it basically means giving up power forever.

C) A government consisting of a subset of the Alliance that can make themselves broadly palatable by dropping parties toxic to some other people. This could either be C/L to make SD more inclined to support it or M/KD to make the left parties more supportive.

I think A is very unlikely and B probably most likely. That's also what the betting markets were saying before the election.

3. Small parties get counted slower but they basically got no votes (total other was like less than 2%). SD gaining in Klippan is probaby because Klippan is a traditional Nazi stronghold.

4. I haven't had time to dive into results properly but I think the broad trend is Sweden is one where the left is losing ground in rural areas, especially to SD, while gaining in urban areas.

[Gustaf]

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.