Sweden election 2022

[ingemann]

A DENK-like party is starting to get a bit of attention in a country, which should be fertile ground for such a party. The party is called Nuans (Nuance) and is led by Mikail Yüksel. He was formerly in the Centre Party and looked set to enter parliament in 2018, but was thrown out of the party shortly before the election due to his close links to the Turkish Grey Wolves organization.
He founded the party three years ago, but it has only just started to receive a bit of attention. The party this year helped arrange demonstrations against the Swedish law for forcible removals, which is said to be used by some in the social service to kidnap and assimilate Muslim children.
This caused a strong rebuke by Liberal MP, Gulan Avci, in an article last month: https://www.expressen.se/debatt/darfor-bor-vi-alla--oroas-av-partiet-nyans/
Today the party was joined by Social Democrat councillor Maher Dabbour from Malmø + twenty party members around him.

The party hasn't shown up in any polls yet, so it might just be a short-lived bit of attention, but one worth tracking.

I don’t think the party has a chance at all, the high Swedish election threshold, mixed with the guy’s history and the relative small size of the Turkish diaspora in Sweden, make it unlikely for him to make it. Even if they succeed to reach out to other Muslim groups I expect them to get between 0,3-1% of the vote with my guess being they get 0,5%, if they fail to reach out to non-Turks I expect them to get 0,1 of the vote.

Honestly I mainly see this as benefit for the old Swedish parties, who get their party cleaned up by these people coming out into the open and leaving. When Nyans crash and burn, it will be clear to the old parties that these people didn’t deliver any votes to them and these people political career will be over.

[ingemann]

BTW what will Ygeman suggestion to put a 50% cap on non-Nordic citizen in “vulnerable areas” have on the election?

https://de.topnews.media/2022/08/01/minister-calls-for-50-percent-cap-on-non-nordic-citizens-in-swedens-vulnerable-areas/

[ingemann]

BTW what will Ygeman suggestion to put a 50% cap on non-Nordic citizen in “vulnerable areas” have on the election?

https://de.topnews.media/2022/08/01/minister-calls-for-50-percent-cap-on-non-nordic-citizens-in-swedens-vulnerable-areas/

It'll further help the Social Democrats in their attempt to triangulate and neutralize rightwing attacks on immigration, integration and law and order. It could potentially move some voters from Social Democrats to the Greens or Left too, but they wouldn't be too fussed about that. But it's apparent that it's not something the Social Democrats are going place a lot of emphasis on, Ygeman has already partially walked the statement back by saying that it's something he's "open to discussing" but not something he's actually proposing at the moment.

sigh

So he ended up going with the worst way to do this. This will not bring anyone back and it will alienate some of their voters. If you as Social Democrat bring up this kind of suggestion, it need to be thought through and you need be willing to fight for it.

[ingemann]

it is interesting how Sweden is now following Norway in this new configuration whereby the Centre/Sentre party is part of the red bloc rather than the blue bloc. Any explanation for this? What parties in Finland and Denmark would be equivalent to the Centre party?   

Equivalent to the Swedish or to the Norwegian Centre Party?

Because as far as I understand the Swedish Centre Party has shifted towards the socially left, fiscally right (or "woke neo-liberal") quadrant in recent years, the Norwegian Centre Party on the other hand not at all.

From a historical point of view the Swedish, the Norwegian and the Finnish Centre Party and the Icelandic Progressive Party are all "Agrarian" parties. The Danish party that comes closest (historically) are actually the Liberals (Venstre).

The Swedish Centre Party in its current outlook is more comparable to the Social Liberals (Radikale Venstre) in Denmark or to D66 in the Netherlands.

It's more complex than that, both the Danish liberal and social liberals were agrarian parties but represented two different groups.

The liberals represented mid-size farmers (the farming middle class), while the social liberal represented the small farmers (the farming working class). but because Denmark is warmer and have better soil, the small farmers the social liberals represented compare better to the traditional farmers in the other Nordic countries.

[ingemann]

it is interesting how Sweden is now following Norway in this new configuration whereby the Centre/Sentre party is part of the red bloc rather than the blue bloc. Any explanation for this? What parties in Finland and Denmark would be equivalent to the Centre party?   

Equivalent to the Swedish or to the Norwegian Centre Party?

Because as far as I understand the Swedish Centre Party has shifted towards the socially left, fiscally right (or "woke neo-liberal") quadrant in recent years, the Norwegian Centre Party on the other hand not at all.

From a historical point of view the Swedish, the Norwegian and the Finnish Centre Party and the Icelandic Progressive Party are all "Agrarian" parties. The Danish party that comes closest (historically) are actually the Liberals (Venstre).

The Swedish Centre Party in its current outlook is more comparable to the Social Liberals (Radikale Venstre) in Denmark or to D66 in the Netherlands.

It's more complex than that, both the Danish liberal and social liberals were agrarian parties but represented two different groups.

The liberals represented mid-size farmers (the farming middle class), while the social liberal represented the small farmers (the farming working class). but because Denmark is warmer and have better soil, the small farmers the social liberals represented compare better to the traditional farmers in the other Nordic countries.

Thank you for the correction.

Would it be right to say though that the social liberals lost their agrarian orientation earlier than the liberals?

Yes, the class of farmers who supported them collapsed in the 60ties, thanks to new laws which made it easier to buy them out and rising wages and mass employment in the cities. A few of them were still around in 90ties but growing old, but today they don't exist anymore. But they were still a major factor in the party until at least 2000, thanks to their children. I would say it was only after 2001 election that their heritage became increasingly irrelevant.

As for the liberals while farmers are a small group today, they're still important in that party, thanks to a mix of social structures, their money, their children, and people working in connected businesses. 

[ingemann]

Turns out that whole "throw immigrants under the bus because they'll always vote for us anyways" strategy didn't work out so well now, did it?

The Social Democrats are losing voters in Stockholm's vulnerable areas, where many chose not to vote. It shows a review of the preliminary election results that SvD has carried out.

In central Rinkeby, in Järva, in Stockholm, the Social Democrats lost 53 percent of their votes, from 77 percent in 2018 to 36 percent in this year's election (a 41 percentage point decline).

Another trend is that voter turnout decreases in areas classified as vulnerable by the police. In Jordbro in Haninge municipality, you could already see on Thursday, when the vote counting was still going on, that turnout had fallen by an average of 8 percentage points.

The same development can also be seen in other areas that the police class as vulnerable areas - in Hallunda, Norsborg and Botkyrka, turnout decreased by 12.4 percentage points.

I remember when I was at the election party in 2018 how the room cheered when the Rinkeby-Järva numbers came on screen. But this year all of the parties, including S, talked about these areas and their people only as problems, rather than as people in dire need of help and solutions. Neither party has been very good at proposing reasonable solutions for people who live there.

It doesn't help that the crime wave has affected these areas the most over the past 3-4 years under an S-government, too.

They ended up increasing their voter share and almost won a election everyone thought they would lose at a point with increased focus on their main weaknesses (immigration and crime). Even with the decades of failed immigration policies, these voter groups means next to nothing compared to the votes the Social Democrats has lost to the Sweden Democrats, the risk with their move to a harder line on immigration and crime was not the loss of a few Muslim votes, but whether they would lose more social liberal middle class ethnic Swedes than they gain or keep less social liberal potential voters.

[ingemann]

They ended up increasing their voter share and almost won a election everyone thought they would lose at a point with increased focus on their main weaknesses (immigration and crime). Even with the decades of failed immigration policies, these voter groups means next to nothing compared to the votes the Social Democrats has lost to the Sweden Democrats, the risk with their move to a harder line on immigration and crime was not the loss of a few Muslim votes, but whether they would lose more social liberal middle class ethnic Swedes than they gain or keep less social liberal potential voters.

Well it still clearly didn't work either way? S still had a net loss to SD and drew just about even with net votes from M.

It's not a zero-sum game, contrary to what many people think. S had a positive message from this spring and early summer where they talked about crime, segregation, the welfare state, and national defense. I was pleasantly surprised when Andersson finally came out against the privatization of schools, which is a major contributor to segregation along with Sweden's disastrous housing policies over the past 30 years (funny how we always blame "decades of failed immigration policies" and not ever on "decades of failed housing and educational policies", but that would shift blame from the scary Muslims and terrible black people to the poor choices that ethnic Swedes, who are always perfect and innocent, have made themselves).

It was a message that appealed to everyone. Believe it or not, you can compete for both groups' votes at the same time. Yet for some reason, S chose to drop that broad popular message and tried to out-SD SD. Desperately saying things like "Somalitowns" and "40% non-Nordic ethnic quotas" don't convince anyone after decades of saying such things are beyond the pale, and all they do is demotivate people whose voting choices are between voting left or not voting at all. So you don't gain anything at all.

Just eye-balling some of these districts, S had major losses that were not fully made up by gains for V, and large percentages went to "Other" while turnout overall was down. So the Andersson coalition lost votes both due to "Other" and also to "didn't vote" in these areas. Just looking at areas like Botkyrka, Skärholmen, Spånga, Rinkeby, Sigtuna, Hagalund, etc. you can count large vote losses there. And that was just a quick view at the Stockholm area's most immigrant-heavy neighborhoods.

Now add up abstentions and defections across the whole country, from people who live outside of vulnerable areas and decided that no party stood for them, or didn't want to choose between SD and endorsing "SD but with a rose logo" and you can see that those votes counted in a close election. A single mandate is roughly 20,000 votes as a rule of thumb. It didn't have to be an either/or campaign message for S. And seeing how incredibly negative and un-substantive this election was, it's not a surprise that turnout dropped so sharply.

I think you’re overly optimistic, if you think the few thousand Islamists and Turkish fascists, they could have gotten from Nyans hadn’t cost them more votes to SD. While I get this is a ideological standpoint from your side, from a pure realpolitik POV the SocDem did incredible well, they had been in power for 8 years, immigration and crime ended up major issues, both where they could expect to lose votes to the right at the same time the economy is in the crapper (but that is obvious caused by external factors). Embracing the political talking point that the problem with crimes and immigration were the fault of the Swedish society not being tolerant enough of these people would not have been a success, even If it had from your POV been the correct moral decision.

[ingemann]

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.

Not really surprising, the surprising part was that it did so well last election with its politics being so well represented in parliament.