What Sweden's Election Tells Us

By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times & Transcript

On Sept 9 the populist Sweden Democrats received 17.9 per cent of the popular vote in the Swedish general election; they ended the day as the country’s third largest political party.

In 2010 they entered the Riksdag, Sweden’s parliament, with 5.7 per cent of the vote. In 2014 they got 12.9 per cent.

One of its founders had been an SS volunteer, and some members wore Nazi uniforms to early meetings in the late 1980s.

They were too extreme to enter Swedish politics in the 1990s, but Jimmie Akesson, the current leader has moderated its image. As well, things have changed.

As elsewhere in Europe, the party has moved Sweden’s entire political spectrum to the right.

Their success will cause havoc in the Riksdag, Sweden’s parliament.

The centre-left Social Democrats, led by the current Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, have governed for 75 of the past 100 years. Since 2014, he has headed a minority coalition government alongside the Green Party.

The parliament also comprises four opposition parties that have operated as a group known as the Alliance: the Moderate Party, a socially and fiscally conservative party; the agricultural-libertarian Centre Party; the Liberals, who are NATO and EU enthusiasts; and the Christian Democrats.

In this election, the Social Democrats, who gained 28.4 per cent, remained the largest party, but they have declined greatly from the more than 45 per cent they received as recently as 1994.

The Moderates got 19.8 per cent, the Centre Party 8.6, the Left Party 7.9, the Christian Democrats 6.4, the Liberals 5.5, and the Greens 4.4.

Together, the ruling centre-left coalition won 40.6 per cent, good for 144 seats, while the Alliance, at 40.2 per cent, gained 143 seats in the 349-seat parliament.

A “grand coalition” between them may be necessary, unless one of the groups agrees to govern with the Sweden Democrats, who captured 62 seats – a gain of 13.

This remains unlikely. But Akesson indicated his party won’t support any administration which doesn’t give it influence.

The main issue that propelled the success of the Sweden Democrats was immigration.

Between 2010 and 2017, 983,000 people moved to the country. About 458,000 were asylum seekers, mostly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

That is a big number relative to Sweden’s population of 10.1 million; the country took in more refugees per capita than any other European nation. Today 18.5 per cent of the population is foreign-born, mostly from outside Europe.

Initially the government, various organizations and ordinary Swedes did an extraordinary amount for asylum seekers. The Migration Agency offered accommodation and daily allowances. Sveriges Television launched shows broadcasting in simple Swedish.

This has changed. A 2018 Ipsos poll, commissioned by the Dagens Nyheter newspaper, suggested sixout-of-10 Swedes would prefer to reduce immigration. And 41 per cent of Swedes want immigration to be reduced significantly, while only 12 per cent want it to be increased. (The poll included 1,030 Swedish voters in an online survey, conducted between Feb. 9 and 19, 2018.)

Liberal Sweden had insisted it could absorb large numbers of non-European migrants without considering how they should be integrated. It is now facing a backlash.