Senate The European Politics Thread

From my point of view the Sanna Marin story is totally overblown - in fact her support has increased since a majority in Finland seems to think it's a silly thing to get upset over a 35-year old going out partying.

 

Election day in Sweden. Last I saw from the opinion polls are that the two government alternatives are within 10 000 votes from each other, so basically well within any margins of error for both sides.

The two options are either the blue-brown coalition where our far right party (standard racist, populist garbage) has been invited by the Christian democrats and the conservative party to join them. The Christian democrats have really joined up with the far right and what used to be a party of compassion is now all about punishing criminals. The conservative party is usually the main opposition party, but when the far right and the Christian democrats are shouting populist phrases from their top of the lungs they have now definetly taken a back seat. It will be interesting to see if they even manage to hold on to their position as second largest party. On this side you also have the Liberal party that was counted as loosing their seats in parliament earlier in the year, but with a change of party leader they look to keep around 4-5% of the vote. The party is basically split in two when it comes to supporting a government where the far right is also a part, and the far right has declared the liberal ideology as their main enemey so it will be interesting to see what happens between those paries.

The other option is the Social democrats, which will still be the largest party. They are not large enough to form a government on their own. They are supported by the Greens, who despite a record warm summer hasn't managed to really get their environmental message through, instead they have become the scapegoat for the high energy and gas prices, and are painted as pure evil from the far right and Christian democrats. For the first time the Center party has also openly said that they will prefer a social democratic government. They are the only centre-right party that has taken a clear stance against the far right and has made it their issue that they do anything stop the far right from any kind of influence on the government. In economics the Center party is quite far to the right and that will be interesting since this coalition also needs the support from the Left party, where you still even have people that support communism. The Left have also declared that they will not automatically support a social democratic government unless they get what they want. The rift between the Centre and the Left is huge, and it will be interesting to see how the Social democrats can get them both to support a national budget.

It's clear that Sweden will in all likelyhood not have a government when the counting of the votes is finished, instead we are in for a couple of weeks with negotiations before we have a government, that most likely will be a minority government but with a support from the majority.

 

Lol, what, one local politician in Ånge? The Left party is at this point in time a classically social democratic party, unlike the Social Democrats. The communism accusations are groundless, and based in the Center's ridiculous and unfounded comparison between the Left and the nazis.

 

Exit polls aren't results. We're some time away from a result. It's an incredibly tight race, so at this point it's more or less impossible to say who'll win.

 

Frankly I loath exit polls and avoid them like the plague.

 

Looking grim in Sweden right now. There's still hope, but it's a small one.

 

My reflections is that at the moment it is very unlikely that we will get anything but a blue-brown coalition government. They have 176 seats in parliament, compared to 175 for the red/green/center with only the last late postal votes to count. And most of those postal votes are from abroad, and Swedes abroad generally vote more to the right than the left. All in all it's less than 50 000 votes between the two options, and comparing to last election the blocks haven't really changed their totals much. The big game changer is that this time the parties on the right welcomed the far right party to join the government. And it is a disgrace that 20% of Swedes votes on a party which was founded as a nazi party back in the 1990s.

The far right are the big winners of the election, but I would also say that the Social democrats are. They increased their share to more than 30% of the vote and is clearly the largest party in Sweden, they also took considerable local and regional wins including the regional election in Stockholm. Since we are heading into an energy crisis and recession it will probably be more comfortable for them to be in opposition for the coming period and not having to take the responsibility of government.

The big losers are the conservative party. They invited the far right to the government, and apparently that made their voters go to the far right party. Why vote for the copy when the original is shouting the loudest? When it looked like we would get a red/green/center coalition I was hoping that the conservative party would see this as a signal and try to reform and transform themselves into the party they were 15 years ago, which was a much more compassionate and centrist party. It's hard to transform yourself while you are in government though.

The other losers are all the small parties. All small parties shrunk, apparently the voters go to the main party of a coalition instead of supporting the little fishes. Sure the liberals and the greens survived and will remain in parliament, which looked unlikely at the start of the year, but it is getting harder to win votes from the larger parties. It's also the voters of small parties that are most likely to switch their votes from one election to the next.

The Center party needs to take a long look at itself. They have been the traditional party for the countryside and very strong in local governments, Now they are almost viped out in the national elections on the countryside, where the voters go to the far right party as a protest against the big cities, and locally small local parties are taking their votes. In my region they have lost positions in municipalities where they have been the largest party since the beginning of democracy. How will they win back their core voters? The Center party's election losses are what explains how the red/green/center coalition lost, even if the Social Democrats increased their share of the vote and the Greens survived into parliament.

So it is apparent that Sweden is a highly divided country, and the big rift is between the progressive cities and the more traditional countryside. I also fear for what will happen in a government where the largest party openly claim that they will do nothing to combat the climate crisis, and they even deny that we are in a climate crisis. Makes me think that the best option is to vote Green in the European Parliament Elections so that the EU can force more climate aware decisions on us.