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POLITICS

The winner doesn’t take it all: Magdalena Andersson out of power but top of the polls

Despite losing power in September’s election, Sweden’s one-and-only female prime minister is still ruling their hearts, according to the polls.

Published: 9 February 2023 11:24 CET
The chamber of the Swedish parliament, Riksdag, showing a woman in blue speaking form the floor and a small cluster of people watching and listening from the side
Magdalena Andersson as opposition leader is free to hold forth while the pro-government parties led by Ulf Kristersson, Johan Pehrson and Ebba Busch wield power. Fredrik Sandberg/TT

Magdalena Andersson of the Social Democrats is seen positively by 55 percent of Swedes, the latest survey by pollsters Ipsos and daily newspaper DN suggests.

Meanwhile the current prime minister, Ulf Kristersson of the centre-right Moderates, is polling at just 32 percent.

And if we look at negative views, Swedish hearts seem to have hardened against all three party leaders of the governing coalition.

Hit especially hard is Liberal leader Johan Pehrson who is now seen unfavourably by a whopping 70 percent, compared with 47 percent in the Ipsos April 2022 poll.

After the election, he became minister for employment and integration in Kristersson’s government, which is supported by the Sweden Democrat party – a party that has long been seen by Swedish liberals as extremist.

“This is yet another sign that the government is having a tough time,” said Ipsos analyst Nicklas Källebring.

But it’s not just in this one poll that things are looking tough for the centre-right government.

In the February political poll for Novus, another polling company, Magdalena Andersson’s Social Democrats recorded their highest result since 2009, and in the Novus party leader poll from January she’s also riding high, seen favourably by 54 percent, while other leaders’ popularity is falling.

The CEO of Novus remarked about the other leaders that “I can’t remember seeing this kind of collapse ever before. Not just for the leaders of the pro-government parties. Or for the opposition parties. But fairly broad.”

Sweden is hence facing a situation where the only politician who is broadly popular is someone who is not in power.

But this doesn’t mean that Sweden needs to expect a change of government or even a change of party leaders soon.

The pro-government parties may be in a minority according to the opinion polls, but in Sweden’s parliament, the Riksdag, they have a majority of 176 to 173. This would only change if one of the pro-government parties felt unhappy enough to leave the coalition.

And if you look at how happy the parties are with their own leaders it’s a different story.

Ulf Kristersson may only have a rating of around 30 percent in the country as a whole, but among his own party’s voters it’s on 83 percent.

Likewise Liberal leader Johan Pehrson may have a generally negative rating in the Novus January survey, but among voters for his allied parties it’s only 23 percent.

The Liberal party itself is unfortunately polling so low that it’s hard to get a big enough sub-sample of its supporters to know what they think of Pehrson in a general poll.

As long as each of the leaders of Sweden’s governing parties can manage to hold the line against internal calls to leave the coalition, they can continue to govern. Even if they may not have overall opinion figures as rosy as those for their rival Magdalena Andersson.

The head of Novus, Torbjörn Sjöström, has also pointed out another development that has become clear from the last few weeks’ polling.

“There is a high level of political conflict and a strong polarisation,” he said to public broadcaster SVT at the end of January.

The proportion of Swedes who are not really taking sides seems to have shrunk. At this point the surveys suggest that the country is more definitely split between those who are warmly supportive and those who are disaffected and unsupportive of the government, with fewer remaining in the middle ground.

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POLITICS

‘Very little debate’ on consequences of Sweden’s crime and migration clampdown

Sweden’s political leaders are putting the population’s well-being at risk by moving the country in a more authoritarian direction, according to a recent report.

Published: 29 April 2024 08:56 CEST
'Very little debate' on consequences of Sweden's crime and migration clampdown

The Liberties Rule of Law report shows Sweden backsliding across more areas than any other of the 19 European Union member states monitored, fuelling concerns that the country risks breaching its international human rights obligations, the report says.

“We’ve seen this regression in other countries for a number of years, such as Poland and Hungary, but now we see it also in countries like Sweden,” says John Stauffer, legal director of the human rights organisation Civil Rights Defenders, which co-authored the Swedish section of the report.

The report, compiled by independent civil liberties groups, examines six common challenges facing European Union member states.

Sweden is shown to be regressing in five of these areas: the justice system, media environment, checks and balances, enabling framework for civil society and systemic human rights issues.

The only area where Sweden has not regressed since 2022 is in its anti-corruption framework, where there has been no movement in either a positive or negative direction.

Source: Liberties Rule of Law report

As politicians scramble to combat an escalation in gang crime, laws are being rushed through with too little consideration for basic rights, according to Civil Rights Defenders.

Stauffer cites Sweden’s new stop-and-search zones as a case in point. From April 25th, police in Sweden can temporarily declare any area a “security zone” if there is deemed to be a risk of shootings or explosive attacks stemming from gang conflicts.

Once an area has received this designation, police will be able to search people and cars in the area without any concrete suspicion.

“This is definitely a piece of legislation where we see that it’s problematic from a human rights perspective,” says Stauffer, adding that it “will result in ethnic profiling and discrimination”.

Civil Rights Defenders sought to prevent the new law and will try to challenge it in the courts once it comes into force, Stauffer tells The Local in an interview for the Sweden in Focus Extra podcast. 

He also notes that victims of racial discrimination at the hands of the Swedish authorities had very little chance of getting a fair hearing as actions by the police or judiciary are “not even covered by the Discrimination Act”.

READ ALSO: ‘Civil rights groups in Sweden can fight this government’s repressive proposals’

Stauffer also expresses concerns that an ongoing migration clampdown risks splitting Sweden into a sort of A and B team, where “the government limits access to rights based on your legal basis for being in the country”.

The report says the government’s migration policies take a “divisive ‘us vs them’ approach, which threatens to increase rather than reduce existing social inequalities and exclude certain groups from becoming part of society”.

Proposals such as the introduction of a requirement for civil servants to report undocumented migrants to the authorities would increase societal mistrust and ultimately weaken the rule of law in Sweden, the report says.

The lack of opposition to the kind of surveillance measures that might previously have sparked an outcry is a major concern, says Stauffer.

Politicians’ consistent depiction of Sweden as a country in crisis “affects the public and creates support for these harsh measures”, says Stauffer. “And there is very little talk and debate about the negative consequences.”

Hear John Stauffer from Civil Rights Defender discuss the Liberties Rule of Law report in the The Local’s Sweden in Focus Extra podcast for Membership+ subscribers.

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