Swedish election 2010

[DL]

What would happen if "red/green" got slightly more seats than "blue", but the SD got into the Riksdag and had the balance of power? Would Reinfeldt try to stay in power with a minority government and the passive support of the SD? This is what the "bourgeois parties" have done in Norway and Denmark with the Danish and Norwegian sister parties of the SD (ie: the DPP and the Progress Party)

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

What would happen if "red/green" got slightly more seats than "blue", but the SD got into the Riksdag and had the balance of power? Would Reinfeldt try to stay in power with a minority government and the passive support of the SD? This is what the "bourgeois parties" have done in Norway and Denmark with the Danish and Norwegian sister parties of the SD (ie: the DPP and the Progress Party)

If I have understood Reinfeldt correctly he will resign if the Red-Green block becomes bigger than the Alliance, in order to allow Sahlin an oppertunity to try to form a goverment. However if she fails to convince one of the smaller bourgeois parties to support her we end up in a very unclear situation. Most experts think that The Speaker would either turn the ball back to Reinfeldt again so that he could try to win over the greens, or he'd ask one of the leaders for the smaller parties (most likly either the Greens' Wetterstrand, or the People Party's Björklund) to form a Centrist minority goverment.

Personally I don't think the last option is realistic at all. My guess would be that Sahlin either wins over the People's Party by promising to pass their school reform, or that the ball is turned back to Reinfeldt and he'll continue to rule with support from the Greens.   

[Gustaf]

The preferred alternatives for both sides seem to be to win over a smaller party from the other side in that situation (MP for the right, C or FP for the left) to form a majority. If that doesn't work, then who knows?

Hopefully the government can get an outright majority, like in the last Demoskop poll.

[Gustaf]

New Sifo. No bloc-level changes, despite including the time when the opposition launched their platform. I guess favouring rich people with lots of kids didn't work this time around. Oh, well.

The only interesting things are: KD close to 4%, S at their lowest level in 13 years and SD below 4%.

M: 31.7%
S: 28.7%
MP: 9.7%
FP: 7.2%
C: 6.7%
V: 5.3%
KD: 4.5%
SD: 3.6%

Blue: 50.1%
Redgreen: 43.7%

SD: 3.6%

Margin: +6.4%

Majority-margin: +2.8% (although SD wouldn't get in with this result).

Still hope!

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

If the sifo poll was the final result (fingers crossed) the seats would be split something like this:

Alliance - 187 (+9)

M - 118 (+21)
Kd - 17 (-7)
Fp - 27 (-1)
C - 25 (-4)

Red-Greens 162 (-9)

S - 106 (-24)
Mp - 36 (+17)
V - 20 (-2)


As we've talked about earlier though, Sd underpolls, so my guess is that they are still over the 4% line. Still looks rather promising.

[Teddy (IDS Legislator)]

http://www.ridingbyriding.ca/2010/09/05/408 my official projection btw.

112 – Moderate
25 – Liberals
20 – Christian Democrats
18 – Center Party
175 – ALLIANCE TOTAL
.
110 – Social Democrats
32 – Greens
18 – Left Party
160 – ALLIANCE TOTAL
.
14 – Nationalists (not in any alliance)


--Note that I use "simplified party identifiers" to help my mostly Canadian readers understand. The Swedish Democrats, for example, are identified as "Nationalists" etc.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Tomorrow all four leaders for the Alliance will be in my town for a few hours... and I have a lecture almost the entire time

In other news, Lars Ohly, leader for the communist light Left Party wants women to use breast pumps when they breast feed, and polls are showing the Alliance still has a steady lead over the opposition. One of the most uncertain things seem to be the size of the smaller centre-right parties. One poll show that the People's Party are increasing greatly, while another says they're backing, one poll says the Centre Party is increasing slightly, another that they're at their worst since 2001.

Also today I met the weirdest guy. He's a candidate for the Centre Party on the list to City Council, but he's going to vote for the Pirate Party to the Parliament. He was really cool.

 

 

[Gustaf]

New Synovate poll:

M: 31.8%
S: 28.6%
FP: 8.2%
MP: 7.2%
V: 6.4%
SD: 6.0%
C: 5.3%
KD: 5.2%

Blue bloc: 50.5%
Redgreen: 42.2%

SD: 6.0%

Margin: +8.3%

Margin for majority: 2.3%

[Tender Branson]

Swedish far right eyes first parliament seats



By Patrick Lannin and Johan Ahlander
LANDSKRONA, Sweden | Fri Sep 10, 2010 9:09am EDT

(Reuters) - In Sweden's last general election, a surge in voter support for an anti-immigrant party in this small, southern coastal town shocked a nation long regarded as one of the world's most liberal.

That party, the Sweden Democrats, now hopes to win its first parliamentary seats in elections on September 19, a radical departure for the country could make forming a new government more difficult for the established parties.

Svenny Hakansson, 77, looks like a kindly grandfather -- mild-mannered and friendly, with an easy smile. Yet the local councilor's political views are tough.

"We want to reduce immigration, we want to get it down to the levels of Denmark and Finland, which is about 20 percent of what Sweden takes in," he told Reuters, sitting in the party's basement offices in this depressed former shipbuilding town.

"Then we want to expel more immigrants who commit crimes than we do now," added the former ports chief, describing what the Sweden Democrats call "a responsible immigration policy."

The rise in support for his party suggests that despite years of tolerance for relatively high levels of immigration, not enough has been done to integrate new arrivals.

It mirrors developments elsewhere in Europe: anti-immigrant parties are already popular in Nordic neighbors Denmark and Norway as well as Italy, France and Belgium and have made strong headway recently in the Netherlands and Austria.

Islam is a particular focus of criticism for the Sweden Democrats, who contend it is not compatible with Swedish values.

"We have religious freedom in Sweden and we shall have that in the future. What I am against is the adaptation of society to the Muslim minority," said party leader Jimmie Akesson.

Critics say the party is racist. Akesson disagrees.

"Criticizing immigration policy is not racist, it is not racist to demand that the law shall apply equally to all, that we shall not have particular rights for certain ethnic groups in Sweden. That is not racism, it is common sense," he added.

BALANCE OF POWER?

Center-right Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt this week called the Sweden Democrats "a right-wing, xenophobic populist party" akin to those found in other European countries.

They were inspired by the Danish People's Party, which grew out of a 1970s anti-tax movement to become one of Europe's most successful anti-immigrant parties.

The center-right Danish minority government usually relies on People's Party support in parliament in return for tougher immigration laws.

The Sweden Democrats polled 2.93 percent nationwide in the 2006 election. Sweden has a threshold of 4 percent of votes to win seats in the 349-member parliament and opinion polls suggest the party has a good shot at clearing the hurdle this time.

That in turn could deprive Reinfeldt, whose center-right coalition has a narrow lead over the opposition, of a majority and leave the far right party holding the balance of power.

A poll on Friday gave the government a slim overall majority even though the Sweden Democrats look set to win seats. Earlier surveys showed the coalition falling just short.

Reinfeldt has said he will not work with the Sweden Democrats. But Professor Folke Johansson of Gothenburg University said the prime minister may have no choice.

"When the government is thinking of putting forward a proposal they will obviously think who will support it, whether it will be the opposition or whether the Sweden Democrats are the only hope," Johansson said.

SHIFT IN STYLE

The rise in support for the Sweden Democrats has come after the party shed its image of skinheads and bomber jackets. A new generation of smartly dressed men and women has taken over.

In Landskrona, the party found fertile ground. The town of 40,000 has high unemployment after the shipbuilding industry was shut down.

Immigration has been higher than elsewhere, said Dragan Kostic, 50, who runs integration work for the local authority.

"It is almost double (the national level)," he told Reuters, saying about 32 percent of the town's population have an immigrant background versus 16 or 17 percent for the country.

The lack of jobs make people more resentful, he says. Part of his job is to get people from different backgrounds together, particularly the youth.

He rejects the Sweden Democrats' solutions.

"They do not have a patent on the idea that it (integration) is not working or that there are difficulties," he said.

"They just deal with the question in a completely different way, in a much more radical way, with much more radical solutions," added Kostic, himself born in former Yugoslavia.

Across town, Fekri Hamad, 43, is the imam of a makeshift mosque on the ground floor of an old office building. From a distance, there is no sign that it is a mosque.

A poster proclaiming its name is hung only on the inside.

Hamad, who came from the Palestinian territories 10 years ago, also sees problems with immigration, but he says Swedes are partly responsible.

"All young people (of immigrant background) feel that society does not accept them," he said.

Hamad held up a poster of Social Democrat leader Mona Sahlin wearing an Islamic-style headscarve, paraphernalia distributed by another anti-immigrant group to attack her. "With a veil or without a veil, she is Swedish," he said.

The imam remained optimistic. "History shows...that Scandinavia is a land of freedom, they like peace...That is the Sweden we know from before and which we still know," he said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68929F20100910

[Gustaf]

Funny things happening in the campaign:

1. KD-leader Göran Hägglund is asked in an interview to choose between Lars Ohly (V) and Jimmie Åkesson (SD) and replies that he cannot because both are equally bad. This gets criticized. Hägglund says in his defence that Ohly, on a similar kind of question, has picked Iran over Israel. Ohly gets angry and calls Hägglund a liar. Hägglund's story is then confirmed by one of Sweden's most respected journalists. Ho-hum.

2. Tabloid Expressen publishes report on SD, which finds that some of their candidates are Nazis. We'll see whether it has any effect.

[Nichlemn]

When was the last time the Social Democrats were not the largest party?

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

When was the last time the Social Democrats were not the largest party?

In 1914 the Conservative General Electoral Union recived 36,5% and was bigger than the Social Democrats' who got 36,4%

[Teddy (IDS Legislator)]

http://www.ridingbyriding.ca/2010/09/05/408 my official projection btw.

112 – Moderate
25 – Liberals
20 – Christian Democrats
18 – Center Party
175 – ALLIANCE TOTAL
.
110 – Social Democrats
32 – Greens
18 – Left Party
160 – ALLIANCE TOTAL
.
14 – Nationalists (not in any alliance)


--Note that I use "simplified party identifiers" to help my mostly Canadian readers understand. The Swedish Democrats, for example, are identified as "Nationalists" etc.

I posted a gigantic and massive update on my website at http://www.ridingbyriding.ca/

I'm now projecting:
112 – Moderate
25 – Liberals
19 – Christian Democrats
19 – Center Party
175 – ALLIANCE TOTAL
.
109 – Social Democrats
33 – Greens
18 – Left Party
160 – ALLIANCE TOTAL
.
14 – Nationalists (not in any alliance)

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

New Sifo poll showing very promising numbers for the Alliance.

Alliance - 51,7%

M - 31,4%
Kd - 6,7%
Fp - 8,8%
C - 4,8%

Red-Greens - 42,0%

S - 28,7%
Mp - 7,1%
V - 6,2%

Sweden Democrats - 4,6%


So according to Sifo the Alliance is now ahead almost 10%. It's starting to look darker and darker for our Red-Green friends. Wonderful news, but my joy is somewhat clouded by the fact that the Centre Party would probably be the smallest party in parliament, if you count in the shy Sweden Democrat factor.

Intresting to note is that the Greens are losing ground in several polls. They'd still do historicly well with these numbers, but they no longer seem to be the third largest party.  

[Gustaf]

In another fun little poll, more LO-members (members of blue collar trade unions) want Reinfeldt as PM than who want Sahlin.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

In another fun little poll, more LO-members (members of blue collar trade unions) want Reinfeldt as PM than who want Sahlin.

Not that surprising really. All LO-members I know either vote for the bourgeois parties or Sd. I mean they really expect truck drives and indusrty workes to vote for a party allied with the Greens... ?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

All LO-members I know

Not the best method of electoral analysis in the world

An uncle of mine (now dead) was a Labour voting farmer (who owned his own land as well).

[Phony Moderate]

Some guy on Politicalbetting.com is suggesting that we are witnessing the demise of Swedish Social Democracy....

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

All LO-members I know

Not the best method of electoral analysis in the world

An uncle of mine (now dead) was a Labour voting farmer (who owned his own land as well).

I'm sure it works just fine Although I admit that in this case it might be a bit skewed considering I know rather few LO-members. Still if these numbers are true it wouldn't seem too strange to me. In Sweden your typical LO-worker has a better sallery than your average teacher, and are most often middle class, and therefore get quite big benefits from the Alliance's tax breaks, and since the Moderates nowadays wants to keep Labour protection laws, there is really no real argument that S can use to keep them in their bucket, and further tax breaks are a quite promising treat. The Greens' proposed tax raise on gas, and special kilometer taxes, are no vote winners among certain LO-quaters like Truck Drivers either.

Some guy on Politicalbetting.com is suggesting that we are witnessing the demise of Swedish Social Democracy....

The Social Democrats will probably never get > 40% again, but they most certainly won't die. They're about as dead as the Moderates after 2002. They'll definatley be back, but hopefully not for a few more years. 


 

[Marokai Backbeat]

Some guy on Politicalbetting.com is suggesting that we are witnessing the demise of Swedish Social Democracy....

Lol, hardly.

What we're witnessing is newer generations of voters growing more and more powerful in politics in Sweden, and arguably, many places over the world. A generation that grew up enjoying the luxuries of what those who came before them built, and now take them for granted as things that were always there in their lives.

You can sort of see something similar in the US in the recent political cycles. Democrats had their lock over the House broken in 1994. The greatest accomplishments of the party was decades before. The minimum wage, unemployment compensation, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps, the lion's share of American infrastructure, and more, and people suddenly moved on, not really caring about those things anymore. People stopped associating everything like that that we enjoy and rely on with the Democrats and left-wing policy somewhere along the line, and started taking all of those things for granted as something that was just "there."

With the advent of the internet and more modern communication it's all just gotten worse. There's been a rightening of the political spectrum pretty much everywhere.

American Democrats are nowhere near as left-wing as we used to be economically, and we'd never do anything as ballsy as the Civil Rights Act today. Canadian Liberals are an utter embarassment and in the last 10 years or more have just gotten consistently less and less successful. The Social Dems in Germany have done about as well as garbage in the polls in recent cycles. Parti Socialiste hasn't exactly lived up to the "socialist" name in quite some time, and Labour in the UK has been a barrel of that "New Labour" nonsense. They are a bit of an anamoly in this lineup since they landslided and controlled the UK for 13 years, but even after they did, it's not like Blair turned around and undid the privatizations of Thatcher's reign.

Of course, the right-wing has also gotten more savvy in certain places. The Tories in the UK no longer seem to openly oppose the minimum wage (indeed Cameron has said openly he supports it and raising it with inflation). Canadian Conservatives know better than to take on social issues. Republicans here still dance around Medicare and Social Security (though they will still take pot-shots at it if they regain control and may actually do something radical this time, they've known better than to tackle those titans for the most part).

In short, all we see here is spoiled new generations of voters who don't know what the older folks were missing before the big bad Social Democratic policies came along, and a right-wing that, mostly, isn't as openly right-wing as they used to be and alot more electorally smart, so they can scoop up "Get your government hands off my Medicare" type voters, or people who have no clue what they'd be without because they've known nothing but the welfare state, like Swedish Cheese. The American right-wing being the possible exception to this rule.

[Gustaf]

1. The Swedish right does much better with older voters than with young voters.
2. You overestimate the ease of the transformation. The Swedish right has changed direction in a clear and open manner, calling previous policy positions mistakes and openly embracing the welfare state. I actually think it is more than people being stupid and politicians being cynical. To some extent it is a genuine change in policy which has changed perceptions of the public (not to say that M-stalwarts are enraged with the new direction, of course).

3. The era of Swedish Social Democracy as we used to know it is over. Social democracy in Europe is in a crisis that goes beyond clever plays by the right. That's not to say that they won't win election again in the near future, but those election wins won't come about the way they used to during the Cold War. At least not in Sweden.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

An exceedingly stupid comment, even by the standards of that place. In a British context 'Swedish Social Democracy' usually means 'the fact that Sweden has a welfare system similar to Britain's but far more extensive', so, yeah. That's unlikely to change no matter the election result, and neither will the position of the Social Democrats as one of the strongest social democratic parties in Europe. Obviously it would be sad if the record of always being the largest party ends, but that record is deceptive anyway (due to the now historical fragmentation of the Right), and in any case it would only mean the end of a record, not the end of the party that made it. The SPÖ is doing alright (certainly in comparison to most sister parties), despite losing its pretty impressive record in 2002.

3. The era of Swedish Social Democracy as we used to know it is over.

Indeed it is. However, this has been the case for about two decades or so now (although you could go even further back, I suppose, but the early nineties is the usual time cited in academic works).

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Also true, but, again, this is not new. What is new is that the methods of dealing with this long-term crisis (which dates from different times in different countries, but is over two decades in all) have recently been exposed as flawed and perhaps even ultimately damaging (the latter point is especially true in the case of the SPD, of course).

For those that doubt that there's a general crisis, consider this. No matter how badly the Social Democrats do, the percentage of the vote they will win will be one of the highest polled recently by any social democratic party in Europe outside certain extremely polarised countries in the South with only a recent-ish history of democratic elections (and which can't be usefully compared in this way with the rest of Europe for those reasons). This was also the case with Labour in Britain earlier in the year.

But I stress again that the problem is the same as it was when it first manifested itself in the 70s and 80s (and a little later in Scandinavia, of course). And that problem is the old one, the same problem that caused so much concern to early generations of revisionist socialists, going all the way back to Bernstein. And his solutions were flawed as well.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

But I stress again that the problem is the same as it was when it first manifested itself in the 70s and 80s (and a little later in Scandinavia, of course). And that problem is the old one, the same problem that caused so much concern to early generations of revisionist socialists, going all the way back to Bernstein. And his solutions were flawed as well.

...which is what (the problem, that is)?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I will be updating this after the Swedish elections, probably: http://besy28.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/comparingresults/

Countries that have had elections since I posted that:Czech Republic, Netherlands, Belgium.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

But I stress again that the problem is the same as it was when it first manifested itself in the 70s and 80s (and a little later in Scandinavia, of course). And that problem is the old one, the same problem that caused so much concern to early generations of revisionist socialists, going all the way back to Bernstein. And his solutions were flawed as well.

...which is what (the problem, that is)?

There is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and no claim of one (not seriously, anyway. Certainly nothing that anyone would ever believe). Everything else flows from that. The specific difficulty at the moment is that it is hard to redistribute the proceeds of economic growth if there isn't any (or any worth more than the paper they're printed on). That, and the collapse of faith in economic planning and corporatism (which means that economic policies broadly similar to other parties tend to be followed in practice), and the increasing distancing of the leadership of such parties from the people that vote for them*. Demographic changes have been more of a problem in some countries than others; in the 1980s the only parties who's electoral decline was clearly linked to the decline of traditional forms of working class employment were the obvious ones; Labour and the SPÖ.

*This is quite recent, surprisingly enough. Hugh Gaitskell might have gone to Winchester, but he understood. Which is why there were pictures of him on the walls of miners lodges in County Durham before the apocalypse.