Sweden election 2022

[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.

[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. 

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Why the sudden rise of SD and the fall of the Moderates in the polls? Is this because of the donations scandal, or just horrible campaigning by the Moderates?

My own theory is that it has to do with unemployment insurance and health insurance. The recent decline in the Moderates numbers in favour of the Sweden Democrats started at the same time as the party announced their plans to cut down on unemployment benefits and sick leave payments. Those cuts are not popular with working-class and middle-class voters and the Sweden Democrats who have a more centrist economic policy has pledged to stop any cuts when they negotiate budgets with the Moderates.

Another factor is also that some Moderate voters are lending their votes to the Liberals in order to assure they get past the 4% line and make it into parliament.

Thirdly, earlier this year the political issues centred a lot around defence and Russia due to the war. This naturally strengthened the Moderates, while the Sweden Democrats (who until just a few months ago opposed NATO membership and like many other far-right European parties have had ties to Russia) suffered. So I also see it as a return to normalcy in a way, as the political discussion returns to be about, economics, crime, and immigration.

Though as you point out, four years ago several polls also predicted that the Sweden Democrats would be bigger than the Moderates, but it never materialised. I guess we'll have to wait and see how it turns out this time around.

I was looking at past elections and S always seem to overperform their polls. With SD rise is likely that this happens again, right?

Yes, it might. Though, if you look at recent elections, while the Social Democrats have a tendency to over-preform on election day compared to polls, it's usually not the centre-right parties but other centre-left parties that under-preform, so in the end it might not help them retain power, they'll just gobble up seats from their political partners.

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 successful 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.

Sorry for a late reply, I haven't been on here for the past few days.

Energy prices in Sweden is actually even now a lot lower than in the rest of Europe. However, Sweden has been very accustomed to very cheap electricity, so a lot of people are still hit hard by the rise in prices. Coupled with inflation and the general increase to cost of living the new prices are taking a hard toll on families' finances. When I talk to my family and friends a lot of them are extremely worried about how they'll afford to pay electricity and heating bills this coming winter and a lot of industry in the south of Sweden has also been complaining that they'll have a hard time staying competitive if something is not done about the price. 

The centre-right is attacking the government because several closers of nuclear power plants. The Left party on the other hand is also attacking the government, but because of energy export. Sweden exports electricity to its European neighbours and they want to reduce the exports in order to reduce prices in Sweden.

The government has tried to defend itself by pointing out that things are actually worse in the rest of Europe and blaming the situation with Russia, calling the price hike, "Putin prices". It's obviously not a very good defence, because voters never know or care about stuff outside of their country's borders (see Brits blaming the global financial crisis of 2008 on Gordon Brown) and because people who have to sell their house cause they cannot afford heating don't feel helped by "look, it could be much worse if you lived in Germany".

It's not the governments only defence though, they've also tried to counter attack by pointing out that a lot of wind turbines are stopped by local centre-right city councils and by proposing their own solutions to lower prices, but it hasn't, as far as I've seen, been a successful strategy.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

I would love to hear the native Swedes' opinions on this.

As the local forum representative of Swedish rainbow capitalist Thatcherite queens, I'll say that I share your view that it has been a very disappointing campaign for some of the same reasons as you list.

Healthcare has always been listed by the voters as the number one issue in every single Swedish election campaign I have experienced and every single election no one actually cares about healthcare and base their vote on it. People ranking healthcare as their most important issue is sort of like people wishing for peace on earth for Christmas, before wishing for their real gifts. You might as well just get used to that.

Otherwise, I have to say I'm very surprised how inefficient and weak the Social Democratic campaign has been. Basically, I thought they had already won this election back in the spring after Magdalena Andersson handled Ukraine very well and the Social Democrats had returned to their old recipe for success, being the party that advances social reform, protects the welfare system and still takes responsibility for the country and have responsible economic policies and spends on defense and are tough on crime.

However, for some reason they completely dropped the ball. I'm not even sure when and why, but it's quite clear they got panic and now basically have nothing to bring to the table but the same tactic that they used in 2018: "The Sweden Democrats are bad, vote for us to stop them." Granted, that's the reason they managed to win last time, so it might be just enough to save them this time as well.

Honestly though, not a single party has a clear, popular and efficient campaign message this election year. It's just a series of silly proposals on how to lower electricity prices and be mean to immigrants coupled with fear-mongering about other parties; S, MP and C fear-mongering about SD; V fear-mongering about C; M and SD fear-mongering about MP; and finally L fear-mongering about V and for the strangest reasons C.

Unfortunately, once again the Sweden Democrats looks like they'll be the big winners of the election. With everyone acting like terrible idiots, it's quite easy for them to hide the fact that they're terrible idiots.

As I've written before the defining issue of this election seems to be energy prices and crime. People are genuinely worried about having to sell their homes because they won't be able to pay electricity bills this winter and some people I know will vote for the centre-right for the first time in their lives because of it. Now, thankfully this is countered by former centre-right voters as myself for the first time ever voting for a left-wing government because we can't stand the Sweden Democrats and the horrible racist populist Trumpian mess that the Moderates and Christian Democrats have turned into over the last few years.

The question I'm asking myself leading into Sunday is, have the Social Democrats been able to win back enough worried home owners with their late entry into the energy price debate to salvage this and are the opposition to the Sweden Democrats strong enough to keep people from delivering a victory to the centre-right.

It might all be for naught though if the Greens or Liberals end up crashing below the floor...

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

As far as I can tell from the outside, the most powerful force in Swedish politics at the moment is the desire to become a bit more like Denmark.

Swedish politics are basically Danish politics ten years later and dumber.

To paraphrase Marx: Scandinavian politics repeats itself, first as Danish tragedy, second as Swedish farce.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

My last pre-election prediction this morning is that I think this will be the Trends Are Real election of Sweden. The centre-left will increase their its support in the big three cities as well as in student towns like Uppsala and Lund, while the rest of the country swing more to the right than four years ago.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

How much collaboration is there likely to be with Sweden Democrats at a regional/local level, especially in areas where they will probably take too many seats to be ignored (scania?)

I think it can be pretty safe to assume we'll get a lot more coalitions at the local and regional level containing the Sweden Democrats after this election.

There are already a few local councils where there is collaboration, both officially and unofficially. In Hörby, Svalöv, Sölvesborg and Bjuv the mayors are all Sweden Democrats. The small town of Bromölla also had a Sweden Democratic mayor for a few years but he resigned and was replaced by a Social Democrat. In Staffanstorp and Surahammar the Sweden Democrats are part of the governing coalitions, but don't hold the position of mayor themselves and in some other places they're not officially part of the governing parties but have very close collaborations with them, such as in Landskrona and my home town Hässleholm. As you might guess most of these places (but not all) are in Scania.

How well these local coalitions have worked have differed from place to place, in Sölvesborg the Sweden Democrat mayor Louise Erixon (Åkesson's ex-girlfriend and the mother of his son) is apparently very popular whereas in Bromölla next door, the Sweden Democratic mayor (as I noted above) had to resign because they completely failed to manage the budget and where on their way to run the municipality's economy into the ground.

One of the annoying things about Swedish elections is they put all their elections on the same day, so municipal elections are overshadowed.

I'm actually a big proponent of the Swedish system in this case. Thanks to the fact that we have all our elections on the same day we also have some of the highest turn-out in local elections anywhere.  The main critique against the system is that local politics will be side-lined by the big national campaigns and that people will just vote the same locally as they do nationally, but the actual results at the local level clearly shows that it's not actually the case.

Local and regional parties flourish and are often very successful, and the results on the local level can be very different to how that municipality votes nationally. According to research from Lund University about 1/3 of voters vote differently at the local and national level.

That being said, for us election nerds it does make it harder to nerd out about it.

Speaking of the Feminist Initiative, it seems Gudrun Schyman left them to found yet another microparty named Climate Alliance. Was it all just a grift?

I think she just genuinely enjoys creating new parties, like a serial entrepreneur but for political parties

She's a bit French in the regard that she sees herself as a candidate and a leader of a movement as much more important than any party that she happen to belong to or used to belong to. It's very odd from a Swedish perspective because party loyalty is extremely ingrained in our political culture.

So, I wouldn't call it a grift in the sense that she only do stuff to benefit economically from it or fool people in any way. She's just a Swedish Melenchon and is not afraid to throw an old party away when that party no longer align 100% with her personal political goals and ambitions.

Outside of a few local chapters, Feminist Initiative is basically dead. Even in most places where they managed to win seats in the city council last time, they haven't field any candidates. I wouldn't be too surprised if they fail to win seats anywhere today.

The Climate Alliance will be a dud as well. Schyman is getting quite old and does not have the energy to campaign like she did a decade ago and her position on the Ukrainian war is not making her any allies.
 

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Some early votes are not counted until wednesday, correct? How many votes are those? Is it enough to change the election's outcome?

Early votes are suppose to be counted tonight.

The votes that are not counted tonight is the vote from abroad and people who voted today but not in their own precinct. (If you're in Stockholm over the weekend but live in Malmö, you're allowed to vote from there but your vote will then be transported back to your home municipality and counted there).

Those votes are counted on Wednesday. In the 1979 election (which was also very close) they decided the election in the centre-rights favour.

There is predicted to be around 200 000 such votes this election.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

I am still confused why the North votes SD, is it because of Sami voters, is it like Northern MN where it's more because of unions?

Northern and central Sweden is very industrial, so northern MN is the right idea. In the far north (Norbotten) you have a lot of mining for example.

It's also, not as rural as it might appear. Don't get me wrong, there a clearly very left-wing rural areas in the North, but if you look at Norbotten, the most left-wing region in the country, 37% of the population lives in the two major settlements of Luleå and Piteå at the coast. 

EDIT: Also SD is always only used for Sweden Democrats. The Social Democrats are abbreviated S or SAP. I understood what you meant from context, but you might end up making a lot of people confused by mixing up S and SD. 

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

The results in rural areas are really dire for the Centre Party. The result, 6,7% isn't the party's worst results compared to other elections, the party did worse in 1998, 2002, 2010 and 2014, however that's thanks to good results in the cities. If you look at the rural areas that has always been the party's strongholds, it's dismal.

In several of the more rural constituencies, such as Kronoberg, Kalmar, Scania North East and Jämtland the party has not won seats for the first time ever. Instead the party has kept its seat in Malmö, which it won as recently as the last election and which would be the first to go away in a normal bad year for the party. Furthermore in Stockholm city, where the party as recently as 1998 didn't have a single seat in, C have kept three seats. Coupled with very disappointing local election results, there is quite a bit of anger among the party membership.


I wouldn't be surprised if Lööf has resigned as party leader by the end of the year.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Also, things are not too cheerful in the Left Party either.

They entered the campaign season high on life expecting to win their best election results in 20 years, so their numbers declining was quite shock to them. One of their MP:s, former environmental spokes-person Jens Holm and the prolific former MP Rosana Dinamarca, has already criticized the party leadership publicly  for a campaign that focused too much on winning blue-collar men by watering down their environmental policies and down-playing their support for immigrants and racial minorities.

The leadership in turn is defending itself by blaming the Social Democrats for surrendering to centre-right on crime, energy and immigration and not bringing up traditional left-wing issues like welfare, healthcare, and labour protection as well as saying that a lot of Left Party supporters voted for the Greens to save them from falling out of parliament.

Nooshi Dadgostar will probably be fine despite all of this, but I'd count on some of her key allies in the party and some other grandees will get the chop within the coming year.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Asking again:

Do absentees usually lean one way or the other in Sweden?

They have usually tended to be good for the Moderates and Greens. This is mostly thanks to Swedish citizens voting from abroad often tend to be well-off educated middle-class types. But with the Social Democrats gains among that very demographic this time around, it's hard to tell how it'll play out this time. 

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Some very specific questions to our Swedes:

1. Why is SD so strong in Dalarna compared to surrounding regions?
2. What's the deal with Gotland? Left-wing overperformance, SD weak, etc.
3. What would be a good explanation for SD's relative weakness in Västerbotten (also compared to Norrbotten)?

I'm afraid that I don't really have any good answers to these questions.

I have also wondered why SD does so poorly on Gotland, considering how well they do in other rural areas. If you find out, please tell me.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Some very specific questions to our Swedes:

1. Why is SD so strong in Dalarna compared to surrounding regions?
2. What's the deal with Gotland? Left-wing overperformance, SD weak, etc.
3. What would be a good explanation for SD's relative weakness in Västerbotten (also compared to Norrbotten)?

I'm afraid that I don't really have any good answers to these questions.

I have also wondered why SD does so poorly on Gotland, considering how well they do in other rural areas. If you find out, please tell me.

I mean C historically has strong ties and a loyal base on Gotland - them aligning with S this time partially explains the block's overperformance.

Well yes, that part is very easy to explain. It's more the weakness of the Sweden Democrats that perplexes me.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

How likely is it that C switches sides under a new leader? This 1-seat majority depending on both left-Liberals and possible future ex-SD MPs is obviously not going to last very long.

I dare say switching back to the blue block is out of the question. Not only is a majority of the party membership genuinely against any form of cooperation with the Sweden Democrats, the voters who actually voted for the party this time strongly oppose the centre-right in its current form and want a government led by the Social Democrats.

By switching back to supporting the right they would alienate the people who support them with-out necessarily making any gains with the rural traditional vote. If your farmer wife leaves you because you had an affair with a young progressive anti-racist city girl, you throwing a glass of water in the face of the city girl won't make your wife take you back, it'll just mean the city girl leaves you as well.

That being said, I think we might see some radical changes in the party. As a member of the party, I think we need to ditch or reform some of our more unpopular policies (no one outside a very niche group of Ayn Rand fanboys likes our position on for profit schools and rent-control) that alienates both centre-left voters but also centre-right voters on the countryside.

We also need a stronger focus on rural issues, it's not enough to just talk about that half-panicked during an election campaign. What we did well from 2014 to 2018 was to actually talk about issues affecting rural communities and that showed in the election results.

Finally we need to find a reason for our existence besides opposing the Sweden Democrats and making Left Party politicians very annoyed. People really doesn't know what our party wants except that we don't want to cooperate with the Sweden Democrats.

My personal preference would be to move in the direction of the Norwegian Centre Party, although not as left-wing economically and absolutely not as critical of the European Union, obviously. Though that ship might already have sailed and the party doesn't have any choice but to fully transform into a copy of Danish Radikale instead, with the last vestiges of our rural base slowly evaporates just like it did for Radikale 20 years ago.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Blue Block at the last moment has now a 2-seat lead even though the margin is 0.7% in their favor. This is contrasted with the 0.9% gap and 1 seat lead from before the mail votes, so geography of their vote got better.

Do you happen to know which parties gained and lost a seat?

The Social Democrats lost, Moderates gained. There is still some counting to be done so they might be able to win it back before everything is over.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Results for the parliamentary election are now finalized. Which means we also know how the small parties out-side of parliament did.

Top-ten looked like this:

1. Partiet Nyans (PNy) Nuance Party - 28 352 - 0,44%
2. Alternativ för Sverige (AfS) Alternative for Sweden - 16 646 - 0,26%
3. Medborgerlig samling (Med) Citizens' Coalition - 12 882 - 0,20%
4. Piratpartiet (PP) Pirate Party - 9 135 - 0,14%
5. Partiet MoD (MD) Party MoD "Bravery"¹ - 6 077 - 0,09%
6. Kristna Värdepartiet (KrVP) Christian Values Party - 5 983 - 0,09%
7. Knapptryckarna (Kn) The Button Pushers² - 5 493 - 0,08%
8. Feministiskt initiativ (FI) Feminist Initiative - 3 157 - 0,05%
9. Landsbygdspartiet Oberoende (LPO) Independent Countryside Party - 2 215 - 0,03
10. Direktdemokraterna (DD) Direct Democracy - 1 755 - 0,03%

The big thing people here are talking about is Nuance. They polled very well in some muslim and immigrant neighbourhoods in big cities and considering how close the election turned out to be, some people are saying that the Social Democrats lost power due to Nuance taking votes from them and the Left Party.

It's also interesting to note just how terrible Feminist Initiative did when you consider the party was close to enter parliament just 8 years ago and was the biggest of the small parties just 4 years ago. I don't think the party will survive much longer.

¹They're Covid conspiracy theorists who are against vaccinations and Covid restrictions

²They're a party that supports some sort of Direct Democracy. They're just in parliament to press the buttons on what the people wants.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

- SD continues to demand the post of Speaker of the Riksdag, but says that he sees negotiations between the four parties as something long-term, not something rushed

Of course the Speaker is chosen by secret ballot, so it doesn't really matter what the four parties agree to in public if Johan Pehrson cannot make sure all but one of the Liberal MP:s vote for a Sweden Democrat instead of whoever the Social Democrats nominate, in a secret ballot.

Considering Andreas Norlén would win easily if he was renominated, it'd be silly for them to instead nominate a Sweden Democrat and most likely lose the Speakership.   

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

I love how you fail to mention S violated the tradition that the 4 largest parties gets the seats, too busy brown-nosing Center.

It's quite clear that all of the parties are willing to ignore that tradition whenever it suits them. All of them have in at least one vote for Speaker and deputy speakers voted against that precedent once in 2018 or 2022.

Since the election of Speaker and deputy speakers are done by secret ballot we also don't know if it was Social Democrats who helped the Centre Party win against the Left Party. Their official position was neutral.

It might as well have been a number of centre-right MP:s who preferred the Centre Party candidate and lend her their votes, another theory is that it was actually a number of Sweden Democrats who voted for her to punish the Left Party for them breaking the tradition 4 years ago and getting their candidate elected instead of Björn Söder.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Expressen reports one Liberal MP, Anna Starbrink, is already a no. They can only afford two defections otherwise there would be a majority against the agreement.

I think you've read that wrong. She's said she'll vote to approve the new government but will vote against some of the policies outlined in the agreement when they're introduced to parliament. 

Clarko, what are the main disagreements of some Liberal MPs to this agreement? Is it more an image thing, rather than content?

I'm not Clarko, but the disagreements mostly has to do with the new very restrictive immigration policies and law and order measures. The Liberals have historically been very immigration and refugee friendly and many of the party's members and politicians are at heart pro-immigration. The reduction from Sweden today taking 6400 contingent refugees per year to only the 900 per year according to the agreement is one of the things that have been most heavily criticized.

The reduction of foreign aid and the lack environmental policies (besides more nuclear power) are other sensitive areas to the Liberals.   

The issue with SD seems to be mostly its unsavoury history. Or was the cooperation of the center-right with New Democracy in the 90s also this controverial?

Yes and no... the then Liberal party leader Bengt Westerberg famously refused to sit on the same couch as them during election night coverage in 1991 and Carl Bildt and Alf Svensson had to negotiate with New Democracy in secret as not to upset Westerberg.