Sweden election 2022

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Are the Swedish democrats still too toxic to be included in any possible goverment ?

Not really, I believe. The Moderates, Liberals and Christian Democrats have a "collaboration agreement" with SD and they have presented some conjoint policies. Not sure if they will be part of a coalition government, but SD will support a proposed Moderate PM and, unlike 2018, M-L-KD will accept that support.

Is there an english text of the collaboration agreement ? what kind of concession has SD won ?

[Oryxslayer]

Are the Swedish democrats still too toxic to be included in any possible goverment ?

Not really, I believe. The Moderates, Liberals and Christian Democrats have a "collaboration agreement" with SD and they have presented some conjoint policies. Not sure if they will be part of a coalition government, but SD will support a proposed Moderate PM and, unlike 2018, M-L-KD will accept that support.

Yeah, M-L-KD-SD are basically the right bloc now, M and KD had already been on board with an SD backed government and then around a year ago, the Liberals left the current centre-left government and said they’d be okay with a government supported by the Swedish Democrats.

This is why I consider Loof and Centre part of the government block, even though they might dispute this assertation. M and their allies have committed themselves to SD which means Loof has only S and the present government as potential partners.  Loof refusing to work with some of the Left parties post-election, or vice versa, would make the Conservative position all the stronger.

[S019]

Are the Swedish democrats still too toxic to be included in any possible goverment ?

Not really, I believe. The Moderates, Liberals and Christian Democrats have a "collaboration agreement" with SD and they have presented some conjoint policies. Not sure if they will be part of a coalition government, but SD will support a proposed Moderate PM and, unlike 2018, M-L-KD will accept that support.

Yeah, M-L-KD-SD are basically the right bloc now, M and KD had already been on board with an SD backed government and then around a year ago, the Liberals left the current centre-left government and said they’d be okay with a government supported by the Swedish Democrats.

This is why I consider Loof and Centre part of the government block, even though they might dispute this assertation. M and their allies have committed themselves to SD which means Loof has only S and the present government as potential partners.  Loof refusing to work with some of the Left parties post-election, or vice versa, would make the Conservative position all the stronger.

I mean currently C is working with the government bloc including V even if it repeatedly votes against Social Democratic budgets. I don't really see why this would change, but I'm not an expert on Swedish politics.

[The Lord Marbury]

Are the Swedish democrats still too toxic to be included in any possible goverment ?

Not really, I believe. The Moderates, Liberals and Christian Democrats have a "collaboration agreement" with SD and they have presented some conjoint policies. Not sure if they will be part of a coalition government, but SD will support a proposed Moderate PM and, unlike 2018, M-L-KD will accept that support.

Is there an english text of the collaboration agreement ? what kind of concession has SD won ?

There's no formal, far-reaching agreement where any party has already made concessions to the others. M, KD, L and SD all agree that Magdalena Andersson should be booted out of office and replaced by Ulf Kristersson, but beyond that there's no agreement other than on issues where the parties happen to align with one another.

They're not even in agreement on which parties should be part of the next government. KD wants a two-party coalition with just them and the Moderates, which also seems to be the latters first preference, though they could be open to include L. The Liberals definitely want a three party M-KD-L coalition that excludes SD, and SD wouldn't mind it if L fell below the threshold because it'd be easier to not have to work with them. All that we know is that SD probably won't be a part of a coalition government, but Jimmie Åkesson has made it very clear that he would need a written agreement with serious concessions before he lets Ulf Kristersson form a government dependent on his support.

[The Lord Marbury]

https://www.dn.se/sverige/annie-loof-vi-ar-beredda-att-sitta-i-en-s-regering/

Well she's finally gone and made it official. Annie Lööf has now said that her preferred Prime Minister is Magdalena Andersson. Obviously with a lot caveats about a future government needing to lean towards the centre ground of politics and the Left Party having as little influence as possible, but a lot of C members, including the youth league, are still very critical.

But she really didn't have much of a choice. C has lost 2-3% in opinion polls compared to last year, and most of those voters appear to have gone to the Social Democrats. If she's going to have any hope of winning some of those people back, tying herself closer to Andersson is probably the smart move.

[Oryxslayer]

https://www.dn.se/sverige/annie-loof-vi-ar-beredda-att-sitta-i-en-s-regering/

Well she's finally gone and made it official. Annie Lööf has now said that her preferred Prime Minister is Magdalena Andersson. Obviously with a lot caveats about a future government needing to lean towards the centre ground of politics and the Left Party having as little influence as possible, but a lot of C members, including the youth league, are still very critical.

But she really didn't have much of a choice. C has lost 2-3% in opinion polls compared to last year, and most of those voters appear to have gone to the Social Democrats. If she's going to have any hope of winning some of those people back, tying herself closer to Andersson is probably the smart move.

There also obviously is no place for her in a Conservative government presently - though that might have been an unsaid assumption.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/sweden/

Polling averages less than a month out show L and Mp at 5% and comfortably above the threshold while C is at 6%. Likely C is losing voters in two primary directions: since last November a decent chunk of C voters who clearly want Andersson have moved to S, and then with the onset of the election campaign, C voters who want a conservative government but simultaneously minimal SD influence (which is what L is explicitly promising) have moved to L.

Meanwhile, S voters (and perhaps some V?) have clearly gotten the memo about strategic voting for the Greens. Most polls and the overall average still show a razor-thin majority for the Red-Greens+C, but still will probably be a situation where just a few thousand or tens of thousands of votes could make the difference

This past week, the parties have started putting up election posters in earnest. Will be interesting to watch the polling averages to see how people react when they start paying attention. It was also around the same time the posters went up 7 weeks before the German election when the SPD began its sharp rise. The SAP is known for running intense campaigns and have historically made gains in the final stretch, so let's see if they can do it again

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

BTW i went and checked out the Moderates' website (https://moderaterna.se/) and also their YouTube channel, and maybe this is just my personal biases shining, I am not really impressed.

First, the website is extremely narrowly focused and once again the Moderates lack a governing vision. The campaign comes off as mostly a (very short) laundry list of items without any long-term vision of society; not that I am disputing the importance of crime, tax policy, energy policy, etc. but these things don't seem to be related to anything beyond the current election and a year or two of policy. Then there is always the transactional one-off of tax cuts. This isn't the first time that the Moderates fail to really put out a positive governing vision; it's just the updated version of "S has failed, things are bad, vote for us".

Much of the website also seems to be aimed at the party faithful as well ("Talk to your neighbors about voting M").

Compare this to the Social Democrats' website (https://www.socialdemokraterna.se/), which is more straight-forward to use, and covers a broader set of issues. Or if you go the laundry-list route, compare to the SPD website (https://www.spd.de/).


The Moderates' Youtube channel is also basically dead, as if there isn't an election coming up literally right now: https://www.youtube.com/user/moderaterna

They've uploaded a grand total of 5 videos in the past year. They don't have an election campaign kick-off film, unlike 2018 and 2014 (and unlike the S video posted earlier), and they haven't updated the "Our Politics" section since 2018 (!). They don't even upload Kristersson's parliamentary speeches, which are uploaded by other parties constantly.

Compare this to the Social Democrat's Youtube channel, which is updated constantly: https://www.youtube.com/c/socialdemokraternas

The videos that M does upload are also just....not very good at all. Kristersson comes off as very forced and try-hard, and the attempts to humanize him through his wife is just not that funny because he keeps interrupting with his over-the-top performance.

Obviously social media and the party website isn't everything (M is very active on Facebook, Insta, and of course out there canvassing in the real world), but I think it shows that they aren't fighting on all fronts like other parties do. I follow S, M, L, and C on Facebook, and all of them are active there and on other social media. It's strange to just cede the YouTube front entirely.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

So in recent days the election campaign has been shaken by the reveal that five out of the eight parties in parliament have been willing to use and abuse loop-holes in the legislation on campaign donations in order to accept large anonymous campaign donations. Anonymous campaign donations above 24 150 SEK are illegal. The investigative TV show Kalla Fakta (Cold Facts) on Swedish Public Service channel SVT has sent out undercover reporters masquerading as businessmen offering to give large donations to the parties as long as they could remain anonymous.

Five of the parties (Social Democrats, Moderates, Sweden Democrats, Christian Democrats and the "Liberals") all suggested loop-holes that could be used in order to donate the money anonymously. Only three parties (Left Party, Centre Party and the Green Party) would not accept the anonymous donations.

Naturally this has opened up a big discussion about political corruption and politicians not following their own rules.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

The scandal has already lead to the resignation of Social Democrat Magdalena Agrell, and Liberal Lisa Flinth, two of the people involved in trying to accept the anonymous donations.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

This is a cheap shot but it is sad that the Liberal Party surged again well above 4% just as soon as it ditched a Black woman as leader.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

SD now announces that they are abandoning their promise to tighten rules on labor immigration through labor market testing, but instead want a salary floor:

The demand for labor market testing is included in the party's election platform, along with a demand to "stop labor immigration to occupations that can be filled by domestic labor". Labor market review, i.e. that the union, the labor market partners or an authority must decide which sectors labor immigration should be allowed in, was abolished in 2008 by the coalition government with the support of the Green Party and resulted in Sweden having since then one of the world's most liberal regulations for labor immigration.

Now Jimmie Åkesson says he is in favor of scrapping the requirement and instead is prepared to support a "salary floor" similar to those proposed by the Moderates and the Christian Democrats. The moderates' demand is an income requirement of 85 percent of the median salary in Sweden, which corresponds to 27,540 kroner instead of today's 13,000 kroner a month - a level that also Migration Minister Anders Ygeman (S) has said he supports. The Christian Democrats want to see SEK 35,000 a month as the salary floor.

With the Moderates' income requirements, it would still be free for labor immigration in a wide range of labor occupations such as personal assistants, truck drivers, concrete workers and construction workers. Already today, many employers can easily circumvent the rules on income requirements and in practice pay out lower wages, when the control that the rules are followed is almost non-existent.

The Sweden Democrats often say they are against labor immigration, but that is a stance that has faltered considerably in the last decade. In 2016, the party chose to go against the then government's proposal to stop wage dumping in public procurement, after secret negotiations with the employer organization Almega. When the Sweden Democrats, before the 2018 election, were to woo the Moderates to be welcomed into a coalition government, the party also said it was in favor of "simplifying" the regulations for labor immigration.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Huh has the pandemic or anything changed general Swedish attitudes towards labour migration ?

[crals]

This is a cheap shot but it is sad that the Liberal Party surged again well above 4% just as soon as it ditched a Black woman as leader.

They surged precisely because they ditched her, no? She was apparently quite bad.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Sweden news round-up:

- S presented a new energy policy proposal that increases electricity generated from nuclear + renewables and also implements a high-cost protection for energy bills. Andersson wants a broad cross-bloc strategy
- V wants to increase state subsidies to regions and municipalities by 70 billion SEK ($7 billion) per year by 2026, arguing that 100,000 new employees are needed in healthcare, schools, and elder care centers
- S wants to introduce a new categorization for crimes + threats against teachers, with penalties up to 6 years in prison
- the SD candidate for Skellefteå, accused of sending unsolicited dick pics to various women, has resigned his candidacy and asked for a replacement candidate
- Finance Minister Mikael Damberg (S) says that cooperation on the budget with M may be necessary in the next parliamentary term, due to the difficult situation where the Red-Greens + Centre cannot agree on a common budget, which has led to situations in the past where the Social Democrats have been forced to govern on a right-wing budget. The only party that S excludes is SD, otherwise S is open to working with any party in order to achieve a broad majority

[The Lord Marbury]

Some new campaign news today. Or definitely-not-a-campaign news, depending on your perspective.

Yesterday M, KD, SD and L announced a joint buss tour with a logo and the slogan "New Energy for Sweden", where their energy policy spokespersons will visit Sweden's nuclear power plants and have public meetings and town halls with voters in nearby towns and cities.

However this naturally sparked a great deal of criticism within the Liberals, both among those who are still critical of the party working with SD and those who begrudgingly tolerate it. Several of the critics have pointed out how this is really killing morale among rank and file members towards the end of the campaign. So today Johan Pehrson was quick go out and downplay the whole affair, pointing out how it was merely a joint information gathering visit at a nuclear power plant. And L's energy policy spokesperson made clear that he would only be able to join them for the visit at the nuclear power plant and not the rest of the trip for "personal reasons". 

A few hours later the Sweden Democrats' official twitter account proudly tweeted that the four parties' first joint campaign would start tomorrow.

But that's not the most important part of the whole story. The most important part would be why in the hell they designed a logo for the campaign nuclear power plant visit that looks like it belongs to some IT company that went bust during the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s?

https://twitter.com/VictorHarju/status/1561394747830304773

[Mike88]

Why not some early 2000s nostalgia? I mean, things were pretty good back then, everyone was optimistic, new technologies were arriving and so on. And then came 9/11 and here we are, with economic depressions, pandemics, wars, etc...

But to be fair, the logo kinda reminds me of NSYNC... xD

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

The scandal has already lead to the resignation of Social Democrat Magdalena Agrell, and Liberal Lisa Flinth, two of the people involved in trying to accept the anonymous donations.

Turns out the Moderates' own party secretary, Gunnar Strömmer, was one of those who gave advice on how to get around campaign donation laws. He has not resigned and there have been no motions to fire him from within the party.

How far removed we are from the days of the Toblerone Affair, when accidentally putting 15k kr. in groceries and chocolate would lead to national disgrace and severely set you back.

[omar04]

How much of an issue has the crime surge been?

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

How much of an issue has the crime surge been?

It's one of the major points of discussion in the election campaign. I think one poll showed law and order as the most important issue for voters and Magdalena Andersson has tried to cultivate an image as tough on crime, although she is under attack from the opposition who says that since the Social Democrats haven't been able to do anything about crime for 8 years it's hard to believe they'll be succesful this time around.

If the blue bloc win this election I think crime and the energy crisis are the two major factors behind it. 

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

How much of an issue has the crime surge been?

It's one of the major points of discussion in the election campaign. I think one poll showed law and order as the most important issue for voters and Magdalena Andersson has tried to cultivate an image as tough on crime, although she is under attack from the opposition who says that since the Social Democrats haven't been able to do anything about crime for 8 years it's hard to believe they'll be succesful this time around.

If the blue bloc win this election I think crime and the energy crisis are the two major factors behind it. 

Is there any immigration fearmongering? Sweden is a very liberal country but there are probably people who blame the crime surge on the ultra-conservative Muslims.

[Oryxslayer]

How much of an issue has the crime surge been?

It's one of the major points of discussion in the election campaign. I think one poll showed law and order as the most important issue for voters and Magdalena Andersson has tried to cultivate an image as tough on crime, although she is under attack from the opposition who says that since the Social Democrats haven't been able to do anything about crime for 8 years it's hard to believe they'll be succesful this time around.

If the blue bloc win this election I think crime and the energy crisis are the two major factors behind it. 

Care to elaborate a bit on the energy crisis? Is is any different from the rest of the continent? Something unique I have seen recently is that Sweden started up Gas plants again to deal with the high demand. This seems like an ideal point of attack by the nuclear-devoted Conservative Alliance, since specifically burning Russian Gas in an emergency caused by Russia while also attempting to join NATO seem contradictory.

[DL]

Is there any realistic possibility that anyone other than the Social Democrats will lead the next government in Sweden? Right now S+V+MP has a big lead over M+KD+C+L and with the SDs surging and mainly taking votes from the more respectable right of centre parties doesnt that make it impossible for the so-called "blue block" to forma  government? Especially since i think I read that C (and maybe L) refuse to be part of any government that depends on SD for support.

[Oryxslayer]

Is there any realistic possibility that anyone other than the Social Democrats will lead the next government in Sweden? Right now S+V+MP has a big lead over M+KD+C+L and with the SDs surging and mainly taking votes from the more respectable right of centre parties doesnt that make it impossible for the so-called "blue block" to forma  government? Especially since i think I read that C (and maybe L) refuse to be part of any government that depends on SD for support.

You have the math wrong. 2018 is 4 years ago. C is no longer effectively part of the Blue Bloc. The Blues have accepted SD as one of their own, though it would be a confidence partner with significant influence over any potential government and not a leader. SD and C (as well as other Social Democratic allies) are mutually incompatible. C made this clearer earlier in the month. So the math now is S+MP+V+C vs M+KD+L+SD.

And that math means the blocks are effectively tied. Pick your poll and one block won't be leading by more than 2%, often times less than 1%.

[omar04]

How much of an issue has the crime surge been?

It's one of the major points of discussion in the election campaign. I think one poll showed law and order as the most important issue for voters and Magdalena Andersson has tried to cultivate an image as tough on crime, although she is under attack from the opposition who says that since the Social Democrats haven't been able to do anything about crime for 8 years it's hard to believe they'll be succesful this time around.

If the blue bloc win this election I think crime and the energy crisis are the two major factors behind it. 

Is there any immigration fearmongering? Sweden is a very liberal country but there are probably people who blame the crime surge on the ultra-conservative Muslims.

It appears so

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/hard-leader-aims-greater-role-swedish-election-88743397

https://twitter.com/SDTobbe/status/1559508416984502272