The Big Bad Swedish Politics & News Thread

[Lord Halifax]

So after an entire day of bickering and the Centre, Liberal and Christian Democratic parties going out and saying that they will not follow the Moderates' lead and be open to negotiating with the Sweden Democrats in the Riksdag, Anna Kinberg Batra held a press conference basically just saying that the Moderates are sticking by what she said on Thursday.

I though KD was to the right of the Moderates, and closer to SD on immigration?

[The Lord Marbury]

So after an entire day of bickering and the Centre, Liberal and Christian Democratic parties going out and saying that they will not follow the Moderates' lead and be open to negotiating with the Sweden Democrats in the Riksdag, Anna Kinberg Batra held a press conference basically just saying that the Moderates are sticking by what she said on Thursday.

I though KD was to the right of the Moderates, and closer to SD on immigration?

Eh, it's not really that simple. Of course the party is to the right of the Moderates on a lot of social issues, but historically the party has been quite positive to things like development aid and accepting refugees as a result of its core voters coming from various free church denominations who like those things as well. However after the terrible result they got in the last election they moved to the right on immigration and law & order and moved away from their classic focus on health care and elderly care in order to attract conservative voters who were dissatisfied with the Moderates but weren't comfortable with SD. Unfortunately for them the Moderates also soon realized that there were a lot of voters there and moved to the right as well and whatever gap had existed between SD and the Moderates was soon squeezed shut and KD had no new voters to gain there. So now M is actually to the right of KD on immigration, since KD still retains some of those classic christian democratic positions like making family reunification easier.

The failed rightward shift is also one of the reasons they're doing so badly now, aside from losing a popular leader, because in an attempt go for the tough on immigrants, law & order and defence crowd the old core voters grew disillusioned as the focus shifted away from soft issues like health care and families. The party now seems to attempt to somewhat pivot back towards their classic issues, but the whole back and forth just makes the party seem confused and its plain jarring to see Ebba Busch Thor go from talking about families and the elderly one day and chemical castration of rapists the other day.

[DavidB.]

Where do disillusioned KD voters who are now to the party's left go?

[The Lord Marbury]

The graveyard.

Joking aside, if they stay within the Alliance (which they'd likely do) the Centre Party would seem like the best fit since M & L are too focused on hardline issues like law & order and defence and it also has a strong rural base like KD. The Centre Party is actually the second largest party among voters who are regular churchgoers (although their voters tend to be in the Church of Sweden rather than a free church), probably as a result of their strong rural support. But there's of course also a big possibility that disillusioned KD voters would just stay on the couch instead.

[The Lord Marbury]

New polls are out.

Between the blocs there pretty much remains a tie, while within the Alliance it's perfectly clear that the Moderate's new strategy of cozying up to SD has been a massive success... for the Centre Party.

Expressen/Demoskop:
Left: 9.0% (+0.9)
Social Democrat: 26.9% (+0.2)
Green: 4.7% (-)

Liberal: 5.8% (+1.1)
Centre: 11.1% (+1.7)
Moderate: 18.5% (-5.8 )
Christian Democrat: 3.6% (+1.0)

Sweden Democrat: 17.1% (+1.3)

Feminist Initiative: 2.1% (-)
Others: 0.8% (-0.4)

Red-Green total: 40.6% (+1.1)
Alliance total: 39.0% (-2.0)

SvD/SIFO:
Left: 7.4% (-0.6)
Social Democrat: 27.3% (-2.4)
Green: 4.6% (+0.3)

Liberal: 5.9% (+0.6)
Centre: 11.6% (+2.3)
Moderate: 19.8% (-2.1)
Christian Democrat: 3.9% (+1.3)

Sweden Democrat: 16.5% (+0.5)

Others: 3.1% (+0.2)

Red-Green total: 39.3% (-2.7)
Alliance total: 41.2% (+2.1)

[The Lord Marbury]

Stefan Löfven, now towards the end of his weeklong mini-tour of Sweden has announced that he will skip this years' Almedalen political week in favour of travelling around the country and discussing politics with regular people. Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson will replace him in Almedalen.

The person in his staff who came up with this should be given a raise. In PR terms it could be a fantastic move to skip that weeklong festival of politicians, business elites, journalists and rosé in order to meet with regular voters. And since he's planning on actually travelling around Sweden he won't make the mistake Bo Lundgren made and go to Almedalen either way and just hang around on the beach or in his hotel room instead of speaking.

[Helsinkian]

Sweden intends to bring back conscription after abolishing it in 2010, citing changes in the security situation of the region.

[ApatheticAustrian]

new cold war getting hotter every other day.

[The Lord Marbury]

Today's Expressen/Demoskop poll:
(link in Swedish: http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/demoskop-nu-ar-sd-storre-an-moderaterna/)

Left: 7.9% (-1.1)
Social Democrat: 27.8% (+0.9)
Green: 5.7% (+1.0)

Liberal: 5.1% (-0.7)
Centre: 12.1% (+1.0)
Moderate: 16.6% (-1.9)
Christian Democrat: 3.0% (-0.6)

Sweden Democrat: 18.2% (+0.7)

Feminist Initiative: 2.0% (-0.1)
Others: 1.6% (+0.8 )

Alliance: 36.8% (-2.2)
Red-Greens: 41.4% (+0.8 )

Well then... good job, Anna.

[parochial boy]

What's with the rise of the Centre party at the moment?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

People angry at the moderates for opening up to SD, it would seem.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What's with the rise of the Centre party at the moment?

1970s nostalgia.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

People angry at the moderates for opening up to SD, it would seem.

The rise of the party actually started long before the Moderates' flirt with SD. That just accelerated the trend. Centre leader Annie Lööf has had very good approval numbers since the 2014 election (yes, the same Annie Lööf that used to be as popular as the plague).

The party has done a good job reconnecting with its rural base, talking a lot about the division between cities and rural areas, attacking the government for not doing enough for rural areas while at the same time cooperating with them to implement some good policies such a moving government jobs from Stockholm to smaller towns and cities.

At the same time the party finally seems to be making inroads in the cities (especially Stockholm) thanks to its immigration and economic policies. They have gained from liberal-minded Greens and centrists Moderates who're both disappointed with their old parties.

I'd reckon the numbers also has a fair bit to do with voters who generally dislike both the Conservative right in M/SD and our incompetent Red-Green government. Similarly to how the LibDems used to win folks who hated both Tories and Labour simply by being neither.

[Lord Halifax]

People angry at the moderates for opening up to SD, it would seem.

The rise of the party actually started long before the Moderates' flirt with SD. That just accelerated the trend. Centre leader Annie Lööf has had very good approval numbers since the 2014 election (yes, the same Annie Lööf that used to be as popular as the plague).

The party has done a good job reconnecting with its rural base, talking a lot about the division between cities and rural areas, attacking the government for not doing enough for rural areas while at the same time cooperating with them to implement some good policies such a moving government jobs from Stockholm to smaller towns and cities.

At the same time the party finally seems to be making inroads in the cities (especially Stockholm) thanks to its immigration and economic policies. They have gained from liberal-minded Greens and centrists Moderates who're both disappointed with their old parties.

I'd reckon the numbers also has a fair bit to do with voters who generally dislike both the Conservative right in M/SD and our incompetent Red-Green government. Similarly to how the LibDems used to win folks who hated both Tories and Labour simply by being neither.

And the Liberals aren't seen as a credible alternative by these folks?

[Diouf]

Moderates at their lowest level ever in Sentio poll - 11% lower than Sweden Democrats.
Sentio is among the half of pollsters that show Sweden Democrats high, and were closer to their actual level at the latest general election.

Left: 8.9%
Social Democrat: 24.1%
Green: 3.4%

Liberal: 3.9%
Centre: 11.0%
Moderate: 15.2%
Christian Democrat: 2.4%

Sweden Democrat: 26.0%

Feminist Initiative: 3.0%

Alliance: 32.5%
Red-Greens: 36.4%

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Why have the Greens plumetted so badly?

Also, if there were to happen in an election, surely one of the two remaining alliance parties would hold up S?

[The Lord Marbury]

People angry at the moderates for opening up to SD, it would seem.

The rise of the party actually started long before the Moderates' flirt with SD. That just accelerated the trend. Centre leader Annie Lööf has had very good approval numbers since the 2014 election (yes, the same Annie Lööf that used to be as popular as the plague).

The party has done a good job reconnecting with its rural base, talking a lot about the division between cities and rural areas, attacking the government for not doing enough for rural areas while at the same time cooperating with them to implement some good policies such a moving government jobs from Stockholm to smaller towns and cities.

At the same time the party finally seems to be making inroads in the cities (especially Stockholm) thanks to its immigration and economic policies. They have gained from liberal-minded Greens and centrists Moderates who're both disappointed with their old parties.

I'd reckon the numbers also has a fair bit to do with voters who generally dislike both the Conservative right in M/SD and our incompetent Red-Green government. Similarly to how the LibDems used to win folks who hated both Tories and Labour simply by being neither.

And the Liberals aren't seen as a credible alternative by these folks?

No, because the Liberals are too confused about what kind of party they want to be at the moment. They take tough positions on defence and law and order, even to the right of the Moderates which doesn't appeal to the people who are going to the Centre right now, while at the same time they make deals with the government on gender equality issues, such as earmarking a further month in parnetal leave for fathers. Also, they attempt to hold on to their old core issue of education with some limited success. Honestly I think the big problem in all of this is Jan Björklund. Don't get me wrong, I think Jan Björklund was born to be an opposition politician and in other circumstances he would excell, but his baggage from the previous government is just too much to overcome. The best thing for the Liberals would be if he had resigned after the last election to give them a chance at a fresh start but now they're stuck, and replacing him one year before the election would just reek of desperation.

Moderates at their lowest level ever in Sentio poll - 11% lower than Sweden Democrats.
Sentio is among the half of pollsters that show Sweden Democrats high, and were closer to their actual level at the latest general election.

Left: 8.9%
Social Democrat: 24.1%
Green: 3.4%

Liberal: 3.9%
Centre: 11.0%
Moderate: 15.2%
Christian Democrat: 2.4%

Sweden Democrat: 26.0%

Feminist Initiative: 3.0%

Alliance: 32.5%
Red-Greens: 36.4%

A few things I would like to note:
1) Sentio is a self-recruited web-panel which doesn't openly disclose the method in which it chooses its participants in the way that other pollsters like Novus, Demoskop, Ipsos, Sifo or SCB does. Such as system can also be easily messed with, as shown in 2014 when a group of students signed up for either YouGov or Sentio's poll (don't remember which), which resulted in the Pirate Party getting 8% while the Feminist Initiative got nearly 20%. The polling company later "corrected" the numbers and published a different result, though without publishing any details of how they "corrected" the result or what had gone wrong the first time.
2) Whether pollsters like Sentio were right about the share of the vote SD were about to get in the last election or just lucky can be disputed. Looking at the last few polls some other pollsters also showed an uptick for SD towards the end which moved in the direction of web panels like Sentio. Though there's not any doubt in the fact that most other pollsters severely underpolled SD ahead of the last election.

Why have the Greens plumetted so badly?

Also, if there were to happen in an election, surely one of the two remaining alliance parties would hold up S?

The Greens have plummeted because they have for the first time ever gone from being in opposition to being in government, and they're also in government with a much larger partner which has blocked several Green manifesto pledges. There was also the whole mess last year with Mehmet Kaplan and Åsa Romson's resignation which brought the party down even further, so they've hit rock bottom and are trying to find their way out. With this crisis they've at least seemed to find out what works best for them, and that's focusing on environmental issues, and they've made a heavy pivot back to that instead focusing of education and other stuff in the past year. We'll just have to wait and see if it works for them. Personally I think they could recover, but they desperately need to repace Gustav Fridolin just like they did Åsa Romson before that could happen, because while he can be somewhat charismatic at times he just drags around too much baggage for them to move beyond this mess.

My personal guess is that if we end up with situation where the Red-Green parties are larger than the Alliance and the Moderates have suffered a heavy defeat, perhaps even down to 3rd place, is that we will end up with some kind of Social Democratic minority government. Probably with passive support from the Centre and/or Liberals which takes the shape of those two parties agreeing not to bring down the government, though there will likely be no deal for active support. At least not as long as M+SD could bring down an S or S+V+MP budget.

[DavidB.]

Why have SD gone up in the polls again?

[The Lord Marbury]

Like the situation with the Centre Party, any gains by SD seems to be a result of the problems the Moderates are having. Though Sentio seems like an outlier, other polls have SD at around 18-20%.

[parochial boy]

KD, the Liberals and the Greens would all fail to make the parliamentary threshold if that poll was replicated in an election, no?

[mvd10]

KD, the Liberals and the Greens would all fail to make the parliamentary threshold if that poll was replicated in an election, no?

4% threshold, so yes. But wouldn't this lead to Moderate or Social Democrat voters strategically voting for the smaller parties so that their bloc will keep a majority in the parliament (if the centre-right bloc still exists in 2018 lol)?

[Helsinkian]

Alliance: 32.5%
Red-Greens: 36.4%

Having permanent party blocks seems silly in a situation where neither bloc is going to get a majority.

[The Lord Marbury]

Alliance: 32.5%
Red-Greens: 36.4%

Having permanent party blocks seems silly in a situation where neither bloc is going to get a majority.

A great deal of people, including Stefan Löfven would be inclined to agree with you there. However when bloc politics has been the norm for decades and the last major cross-bloc cooperation was the Social Democratic-Centre deal of the mid-90s, change doesn't come easy. And the rightward drift of the Liberals and the Centre Party in particular on economic policy and labour policy also makes such deals far more difficult. The Social Democrats are also showing signs of leaving behind the Göran Persson-style welfare and economic policies of the 90s and 2000s and are moving somewhat leftward, which means that the distance becomes even greater. Still, the degree of disunity in the Alliance at the moment hasn't been this great since before its creation in 2004, and we'll have to wait and see just how unified they'll be in next year's election. I'm beginning to doubt whether we'll even see a real detailed joint manifesto this time around like in the past three elections, and instead the Alliance will mostly exist in name only. And of course the Red-Green parties will run on their own separate manifestos just like in the last election.

-----

Speaking of polls, here's SIFO's latest:

Left: 7.1% (+0.2)
Social Democrat: 28.7% (+1.2)
Green: 4.5% (-0.4)

Liberals: 5.7% (+0.1)
Centre: 14.2% (+2.4)
Moderate: 18.4 (-2.0)
Christian Democrat: 2.8% (-0.8 )

Sweden Democrat: 16.7% (-0.1)
Others: 1.9% (-0.8 )

Alliance: 41.0% (-0.4)
Red-Greens: 40.3% (+1.0)

[ANNIE LÖÖF LAUGHS MANIACALLY]
 

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Social Democrats are messaging  rightwards in the law and order sphere (trigger warning: politico)

http://www.politico.eu/article/stefan-lofven-swedish-pms-pledge-no-more-mr-nice-guy/

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Social Democrats are messaging  rightwards in the law and order sphere (trigger warning: politico)

http://www.politico.eu/article/stefan-lofven-swedish-pms-pledge-no-more-mr-nice-guy/

The article is a bit misleading if you ask me. It's true that the Social Democrats have started to use a sterner tone when it comes to crime and immigration recently compared to how they have sounded the past decade. It's also true that they have proposed adopting tougher stances on immigration for their upcoming party congress. However those positions aren't in any way anything that is unprecedented for the party.

The Social Democrats have always been quite centrist on social issues except for the last ten years when they've moved in a more progressive direction. Historically they've supported a strong military as a way to safe-keep Sweden's neutrality policy. Since they don't want us to have any official allies we need to be strong enough to defend ourselves. It's just the Greens who have been idealistically pacifist wanting to cut down on military spending. The party has also for the most part been for a rather restrictive immigration policy and as recently as the early 2000's they feuded with the Greens over deportation of illegal immigrants.

When the article makes it sound as an unprecedented move on the Social Democrats part, that's not true. It's actually more of a move back to business as usual. Not that the move won't be controversial with-in the party, especially with the youth-wing or will cause friction with the Greens but it isn't anything new really.