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SWEDEN DEMOCRATS

Nationalist leader keeps male support base

UPDATED: A new poll for Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet has confirmed that Jimmie Åkesson, the leader of the nationalist Sweden Democrats continues to have a strong male support base.

Published: 28 June 2015 17:55 CEST
Updated: 28 June 2015 19:00 CEST
Nationalist leader keeps male support base
Photo: TT

Although Jimmie Åkesson’s confidence rating fell by one percent to 30 percent, 44 percent of men (up 10 percent on the last poll three months ago) rated him highly in the poll. By contrast, only 16 percent of women had confidence in the leader of the anti-immigration party.

Both male and female voters still had more confidence in Prime Minister Stefan Löfven than any other political leader but, despite recently getting his spring budget passed and improving economic news, his rating was only boosted by two percent to 36 percent.

Löfven’s rating among women, however, was a higher figure of 40 percent.

Centre Party leader, Annie Loof, was just one percent behind the prime minister on 35 percent, the same figure as the leader of The Left Party, Jonas Sjöstedt.

Green Party spokeswoman, Åsa Romson, languished at the bottom of the confidence table on 11 percent, three percent down on three months ago.

The full results of the poll were

Stefan Löfven (Social Democrat) 36 percent

Annie Loof (Centre Party) 35 percent

Jonas Sjöstedt (Left Party) 35 percent

Anna Kinberg Batra (Moderates) 31 percent

Jimmie Åkesson (Sweden Democrats) 30 percent

Jan Björklund (Liberal) 28 percent

Gustav Fridolin (Green Party) 28 percent

Ebba Busch Thor (Christian Democrats) 17 percent

Åsa Romson (Green Party) 11 percent

These figures come ten days after a poll or the Metro newspaper put support for the Sweden Democrats, led by Åkesson, at around 20 percent.

This came in the wake of the country's largest biannual political poll, carried out by Sweden's number crunching agency Statistics Sweden, which also reported that support for right-wing parties was growing earlier this month.
 
Sweden continues to take in more asylum seekers per capita than any other European Union member state.
 
While the Social Democrat/Green Party government has said it backs new EU quotas designed to distribute refugees more evenly across the 28 member bloc, it remains strongly in favour of maintaining the country's tolerant and open approach to immigration.

POLITICS

Sweden Democrat leader calls for ‘reevaluation’ of Swedish EU membership

The leader of the Sweden Democrats reawakened the spectre of Swexit – Sweden leaving the European Union – on Tuesday penning a debate article which called for a reevaluation of membership.

Published: 2 May 2023 15:36 CEST
Sweden Democrat leader calls for 'reevaluation' of Swedish EU membership

“With ever increasing instances of far-reaching gesture politics, EU membership is starting to become dangerous like a straitjacket which we have no choice but to simply accept and adapt to,” Åkesson wrote in an opinion piece in the Aftonbladet newspaper. 

“This means that German, Polish or French politicians can in practice decide over which car you are going to be allowed to buy, how expensive your petrol should be, or which tree you should be allowed to cut down on your own land.” 

As a result, he said there are “good reasons to properly reevaluate our membership of the union”.  

In the run-up to the UK’s Brexit referendum in 2016, the Sweden Democrats called frequently for Sweden to follow the British example and hold a renegotiation of its relationship with the EU followed by an in-out referendum. 

But in 2019, as the UK struggled to negotiate a satisfactory departure agreement, Åkesson changed his position saying that he now hoped to change the European Union from within. 

In his article on Tuesday, Åkesson said that power was continually being ceded from Sweden to Brussels. 

“The more that happens, the more the will of the people as reflected in parliamentary results is going to be less and less relevant,” her said. “Our Swedish elections are going to soon become irrelevant to Sweden’s development, and of course, we can’t let that happen.”

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