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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35668 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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Swedish elections, government formation, and future demographics.

In a spontaneous burst of inspiration from reading @Pasha's rant earlier, I thought I would reflect on the Swedish election, and election-adjacent topics.

Background

Since the Sweden Democrats (abbreviated SD) entered the Riksdag in 2010, and because no other party wanted to cooperate with them, recent governments have been forced to barter with other opposition parties to realise their plans: The 2010-2014 right-wing Alliance coalition government made an agreement facilitating higher immigration (don't know why translating the Wikipedia page turns it into a mobile layout, sorry!) with the Green Party in exchange for parliamentary support.

Similarly, after the Social Democrats (abbreviated S) won the 2014 election, they formed a Red-Green minority government reliant on the Alliance pledging to abstain from voting against the government. Only 9 months later, Christan Democrat party members at a party conference voted against continuing the agreement, effectively dissolving it 7 years in advance. This led to a bizarre parliamentary situation for the following three years:

After the December agreement was dissolved, Swedish politics continued as if it still applied: the Alliance parties did not submit a common budget and the parliamentarily weak Red-Green government was allowed to continue governing as if nothing had happened. By breaking the isolation of the Sweden Democrats, the Alliance could have seized government power, but chose not to.

Once again, in the 2018 election, the Sweden Democrats continued their unbroken advance in the polls. This time, and only after 134 days, the Social Democrats finally formed a new minority government by breaking apart the Alliance - the Centre Party and the Liberals provided parliamentary support in exchange for the new government signing a 73-point agreement, resulting in this supposedly left-wing government enacting policy you would expect from a centre-right one.

Meanwhile, the remnants of the Alliance (Christan Democrats and Moderate Party) finally ended the isolation of the Sweden Democrats, and this new bloc was later joined by the Liberals when they ended their support of the government in 2021 (after another government crisis, btw), and so we had our two blocs contesting the 2022 election.

2022 election

I'm sure the results are well knows, so I'll be brief: The right-wing received 176 Riksdag seats to the left-wing's 173, and they are poised to form a government. Right now, a Moderate-led minority government excluding SD (but in close cooperation with them) seems most likely. The largest fear among right-wing voters is that the Liberals (or at least two of their elected Riksdag members) might switch blocs as they did in 2018, if they and SD can't reconcile their disagreements.

We saw what I think is a preminition of events to come in yesterday's elections of the Speaker of the Riksdag and his deputies. Riksdag members vote in these elections, and the right-wing bloc agreed beforehand to re-elect the sitting Speaker (a Moderate Party member) and a Sweden Democrat as second deputy. The results of the second deputy (secret) ballot:

  • Julia Kronlid (SD), 174

  • Janine Alm Ericson (MP), 47

  • Blank vote 126

So, two votes are missing. Some cranky Liberals acting up, 4D chess by SD members to discredit the former, who knows? If I had to guess, the former, and if I had to guess some more, I think this will be a recurring theme in the coming four years - the Moderate Party will be hard-pressed in balancing the Liberal-SD rivalry to maintain a parliamentary majority and avoid another government crisis. Then again, most Riksdag votes are open ballot, and in Swedish politics, voting against the party usually means expulsion - maybe any anti-SD Liberal members can be scared into submission? SD themselves are no stranger to triggering crises in parliament if they feel their policies aren't being respected. It will be a precarious four years, even compared to our previous chaotic election cycles.

Election reactions

Reading international headlines, the election seems to have been broadly characterised as the "rise of the far-right", referring of course to the Main Character in Swedish politics since 2006. But I feel that this is doing a disservice when representing SD. It doesn't help that that, domestically, left-wing parties consistently use the term "blue-brown" when referring to the right-wing bloc.

If I had to concisely describe SD, they are:

  • centre-left economically (protecting welfare services, expanding unemployment benefits and higher pensions on one hand, while cutting fuel duties and some parts of state expenditure on the other)

  • socially conservative (just read this)

  • stealing voters from left and right parties in about equal measures (2018, 2022, click the party icons).

When I read "far-right" my mind wanders to deportations, limited rights for women and minorities, strict state control on speech, sexuality, and so on. Yet I don't see this party even coming close to enacting any of this (well, the speech part might already be sorted)? And even if they wanted to, their own voters are opposed to all of it. Is the collectivce international mainstream media wrong on this? Am I being too generous to SD, do I need a terminology update?

Sweden's changing demographics

Sweden has long had a large immigration, leading to 26.3% of the population being either foreign-born or born in Sweden to two foreign-born parents in 2021, according to Statistics Sweden. Historically, the left-wing (mainly the Social Democrats) have been counting on electoral support from these groups - I will try to substantiate these claims:

Detailed statistics aren't kept in Sweden, but the "Vulnerable area" designation by Swedish police is a strong predictor of a high proportion of foreigners, in my opinion. Correlating these areas with the top 10 Social Democrat voter strongholds, I found that four of these belonged to a Vulnerable area, and coincidentally that a fifth was home to a mosque.

As a second data point, the Political Party Preference Survey (couldn't find a translation) from May showed that among voters with foreign background, 47.3% voted for the Social Democrats, compared with 33.4% of people with Swedish background. I hope this lends at least some credence to my claims.

In 2019, the Nuance Party was founded. The party explicitly targets Muslim voters, with core issue examples being quelling racism against immigrants, stopping Swedish authorities from taking custody of Muslim children, and supporting Palestine. They received 0.44% of 2022 votes, became the largest party outside of the Riksdag, and gained seats in two local councils. They missed acquiring seats in the Riksdag by a lot, but their success, concentrated to immigrant-dense localities, has prompted speculation that they inadvertently caused the left-wing to lose the election.

And I can't see any indications to the contrary. It's clear to me that Nuance very disproportionately attracts voters with a foreign background, and aside from very drastic changes in policy, the Social Democrats will keep bleeding voters to them, if only because they currently have a monopoly on policy specifically aimed towards immigrants.

So my predictions is that the Social Democrats will find themselves in a difficult spot. They currently enjoy the support of a sizable contingent of (presumably) conservative, muslim and immigrant voters, but also many progressive inner city Swedes, especially women. Will they be able to appease both groups going forward?

Finally

If you're interested, Aftonbladet made a good tool where you can explore election results in different parts of Sweden (use "Tillbaka" to zoom out).

If I may make a suggestion: It's very frustrating and confusing to read "SD" and not know whether it refers to Sweden Democrats or Social Democrats, both of which are discussed throughout your post.

Thank you, I edited the post. To be clear, SD refers to the Sweden Democrats, the Social Democrats are usually called S.

I sympathise with your frustration: I note only that the reason the poster above you is doing that is because there is a sort of de-facto standard system of abbreviations for political parties in Sweden, under which Sweden Democrats are referred to as SD (and the Social Democrats as S, if you're curious).

Where the Social Democrats always called just S? Or did this start after the Swedish Democrats took over the SD

I believe they've always been S but I don't know for sure.

They were called SAP historically, after their full name:

Sveriges socialdemokratiska arbetarparti

Sweden's social democratic workers party.

Is Borgen popular over there? It is absolutely the best piece of political filmmaking I have ever seen (I haven't seen the last season they recently came up with). It is also a good introduction to Northern European politics for outsiders since the political systems of Scandinavia, Netherlands etc are very similar.

I can't tell you that series specifically, but Nordic drama/Nordic noir is quite popular in general (as you would expect) so I imagine the same goes for Borgen.

Also has some cynical comments on the nature of power; in Season 1 our hero unexpectedly becomes Prime Minister and is all about governing according to her (and her party's) ideals against various opposing forces. By Season 3 she's championing a bill she doesn't really care about to give her new party relevance.

Spoiler tags might be a good idea here :)

Oh it is quite cynical for a show about Danish politics. The episodes about the CIA torture black sites or Danish soldiers in Afghanistan come to my mind. Really a good depiction of the type of challenges small country politicians face in the periphery of the American Empire as well.

Good write-up.

Sweden has long had a large immigration, leading to 26.3% of the population being either foreign-born or born in Sweden to two foreign-born parents in 2021, according to Statistics Sweden.

It should be noted that this includes a lot of intra Europe migration, it's not just refugees from Africa and the middle east/central Asia.

So my predictions is that the Social Democrats will find themselves in a difficult spot. They currently enjoy the support of a sizable contingent of (presumably) conservative, muslim and immigrant voters, but also many progressive inner city Swedes, especially women. Will they be able to appease both groups going forward?

A complicating factor is that Social democrats (S) still stand to lose more voters to the Sweden Democrats (SD) than they do to Nyans. We have to remember here that S lost over two whole percentage points of voters to SD, while nyans got 0.44% of voters that may or may not have voted for S before. When the journalist Niklas Orrenius investigated the party and it's voters many claimed that they were choosing between Nyans and SD, implying that they were mostly protest voting in areas with very low voter participation.

Nyans is a heavily controversial party even among Muslim immigrants. Perhaps they can reform themselves like SD but I find that unlikely. Perhaps another party with a similar platform but with less controversial candidates will be formed, if so that would be a much bigger threat.

I would imagine that the left wing party (V) would be the primary destination of voters dissatisfied with S if they move rightwards on immigration and social issues. I furthermore predict that V will try to outflank Nyans on the issues they promote if they have continued relevance.

It should be noted that this includes a lot of intra Europe migration, it's not just refugees from Africa and the middle east/central Asia.

Very true, 26.3% of people having foreign background does not equal 26.3% muslim population. On the same Statistics Sweden page I linked in your quote, foreign-born people are further stratified by region of birth, and out of approximately 1 000 000 people, almost half were born in a European country, just to give an example. And naturally, being a muslim voter does not equal being a Nuance voter.

Nyans is a heavily controversial party even among Muslim immigrants

I see, I don't have much insight into voter attitudes beyond what polls and Swedish mainstream media tells me (and I have very low trust in their ability to gauge opinion in an unbiased way).

I'm sorry... Nyans? XD Is there a meme behind that or is it just that they sound similar? I have to know!

The "Nuance Party" is written as "Partiet Nyans" in Swedish.

Yeah, two things that frequently don't seem to be that well understood when discussing immigration statistics in various European countries and European vote are:

  • When a country like Sweden, say, has 26,3 % of its people being of foreign origin, it doesn't mean they're all Muslim or outside of Europe (I've frequently seen people make the assumption that this would be the case). Traditionally, the biggest community of immigrants in Sweden were the Finns, though this has changed in recent decades. Coincidentally, Sweden-Finns have generally, from what I've been understood, been considered a voter block for SD, which is easy for me to partially confirm just by checking the comments on SD's Facebook page and seeing all the Finnish-surname commentators praising the party.

  • While immigrants outside of Europe tend to vote for left parties (particularly the Social Democrats - further-left parties just generally are too woke to attract considerable support), a large portion of them simply does not vote at all, making the immigrants much less of a "vote bank" for the left than many seem to assume. I'd imagine that many Nyans voters come from this section.

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