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

[Kosmos]

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?

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.

[Kosmos]

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.

[Kosmos]

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.

[Kosmos]

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.

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

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.

[Kosmos]

Traditionally, the Centre Party and Liberals (Folkpartiet) used to be in the middle while the Moderates where both economically and socially right wing. But that started changing as Reinfeldt moved the Moderate Party towards the middle and the Centre party became a more clear-cut liberal party. I would say the Centre party has undergone quite a transformation, going from being supported mainly by rural working class men to now having gained votes from a large number of middle class urban women.

Anyway, now that we have an M-KD budget, it seems logical that we also get an M-KD government. Maybe it will be unstable and not work out; we would find out down the line. With Kristersson having to keep both Lööf and Åkesson happy enough not to bring him down, it would be a fragile government that has to do a delicate balancing act. But given that S and C seemingly are too far apart to work together, there doesn't seem to be any better option.

[Kosmos]

Most polls have KD in the 6-7% range though, and C usually (but not always) above 8%. So I am a little skeptical of the Ipsos poll for now. But time will tell.