Elections in Sweden

In General

In last day's elections, the Swedish government lost their majority of seats (down to 172 from 178 (175 needed for a majority)) in the parliament. Though their proportion of votes rose from 48.24 % to 49.3 %. In general then, I would say that the Alliance government did a better election than the last one, but other factors conspired against them.

The main reason to that the proportion of votes went up, and the seats went down is of course that the Sweden Democrats passed the 4 % hurdle for getting parliamentary seats. With their votes now being included in the full results, the Alliance was able to raise their number of votes and lose seats.

I have some hypotheses that I would like to play around with, these are in no way based on any real data, so I have to admit that I am speculating about this, but in any case:

The red-green opposition, decided to join together to meet the alliance. This meant that the Left Party (formerly the Communist party), was guaranteed seats in the government in the case of a red-green victory. Many Social Democrats who, would refuse to vote at the Alliance therefor jumped ship and voted on the Sweden Democrats, anything to prevent Lars Ohly, the leader of the Left party from becoming a minister.

Since I am a scientist, I need to be honest and stress once again this is speculation and not based on any real "voter flow" data, but I think it is an entertaining thought anyway.

Sverigedemokraterna

For those who wonder, the SD-party is a party who have a rather inflamed rhetoric about immigration. They are against Union membership for Sweden, and do in general have a leftish social model. Some call them the extreme right, but not so much for them actually being to the right, but rather them having their roots in an organisation nicely named Bevara Sverige Svenskt or Keep Sweden Swedish. These are as could perhaps be guessed from their name in general seen as neo-nazis (and the organisation certainly had connection to various national socialist people and movements) and thus the extreme right (not that the nazis where particularly right-oriented in their politics, but anyway...).

The party claims to have washed themselves clean from their past (I suppose in a similar way that the Left party washed their communist past clean (their party leader is has literally admitted to being a communist)).

In Täby

In the municipality of Täby, just north of Stockholm (a place I have a special connection to, even though I live in the Netherlands), the Moderat majority was lost. Overall the Moderates lost 11.2 % while the Liberal People Party, gained the same share. The main reason for this being local politics, and most likely being rooted with the fact that the Moderates sold of a public school (no problem with that) for virtually nothing (9.2 MSEK or roughly 1 M€) (big problem with that), the Täby council ended up in court and was found to have broken the law (sv) when selling of the public property. Despite the verdict, the council refused to do anything about it.

Obviously, people are not happy if you hand over tax-payer property without just compensation. Thus, we can see the voters verdict of this in the local elections of Täby today.