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Nationalist gains as Moderates dip in polls

The anti-immigration Sweden Democrat party gained support during last week’s national political conference Almedalen, while backing for the country’s main centre-right opposition group fell.

Published: 9 July 2015 07:56 CEST

Nationalist gains as Moderates dip in polls

Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Akesson at Almedalen. Photo TT

The poll, for which more than 1250 people were asked who they would choose if there was a parliamentary election last week, suggests that the nationalist Sweden Democrats are now supported by 18.7 percent of voters.

This represents a jump of 3.0 percent on the last survey carried out by the same pollsters, Demoskop, for Sweden’s newspaper Expressen a month ago.

Sweden’s largest opposition party the Moderates – who led the previous government – saw its support drop by 3.0 points over the same period.

The poll also suggests a slight dip in support for Prime Minister Stefan Löfven’s Social Democrat party, but very small gains for their coalition partner, the Greens.

The smallest party in the Swedish parliament, the centre right Christian Democrats saw its support rise by 0.5 percent.

Demoskop interviewed a random section of people across the country between July 1st to July 7th as Sweden’s political conference week, Almedalen, took place on the island of Gotland. All of Sweden’s parties were given one day to dominate the agenda, culminating in a keynote speech on the stage in Almedalen park, in the medieval city of Visby.

More than 20,000 political campaigners, journalists, councillors, lobbyists and business people attended the event, which was covered in detail by The Local.

The political festival saw the nationalist Sweden Democrats attempt to broaden their agenda by focusing on children’s policies as well as cutting immigration.

Meanwhile new Moderate Party leader Anna Kinberg Batra and Sweden’s youngest political leader Ebba Busch Thor, who heads the Christian Democrats both made their debut Almedalen speeches.

Previous polls have already suggested that the Sweden Democrats have been continuing to grow their fan base since scoring 12.9 percent in the country’s last general election in 2014, but few surveys have suggested a proportion of supporters as high as Demoskop’s estimate of 18.7 percent.

Inside Sweden: Why troll factory won't spark a government crisis

Hej,

News that the Sweden Democrats are operating a far-right troll factory – which among other things the party uses to smear political opponents as well as its supposed allies – has caused probably the biggest rift yet between them and the three other parties that make up Sweden’s ruling coalition.

The leaders of the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals all strongly criticised the Sweden Democrats’ blatant violation of the so-called “respect clause” in their Tidö collaboration agreement – the clause that states that the four parties should speak respectfully of each other in the media.

But after crisis talks held on Thursday, the conflict appears to be dying down.

The Sweden Democrats hit out strongly at the TV4 Kalla Fakta documentary where the troll factory was revealed, calling it a smear campaign and disinformation, but simultaneously went as far as to confirm that they do run anonymous social media accounts for which they refused to apologise.

They did say sorry to the Tidö parties for including them in the smear campaigns, and promised to remove some of the posts that had offended the other three parties, plus reassign a couple of members of staff to other duties until they’ve been given training on the Tidö “respect clause”.

But that doesn’t remove the fact that they vowed to continue the anonymous social media accounts whose existence they had prior to the documentary consistently denied, or the fact that some of the social media posts shared not only vague anti-immigration content, but white power propaganda.

The Liberals took the row the furthest, with Liberal leader Johan Pehrson describing people in his party as skitförbannade – pissed off as hell. He said ahead of the crisis meeting that they would demand that the Sweden Democrats cease all anonymous posting, which the latter rejected.

The party had two choices: walk out of the government collaboration and possibly spark a snap election, or walk back its strong words ahead of the meeting and wait for it to blow over.

They chose a kind of middle way, and called for an inquiry to be launched into banning political parties from operating anonymous social media accounts. The Social Democrats immediately accused the Liberals of trying to “bury the issue in an inquiry” – a classic Swedish political method of indecisive conflict avoidance which the Social Democrats themselves are well familiar with.

The Christian Democrats and Moderates both said that the Sweden Democrats had accepted their criticism and welcomed the party’s reshuffling of staff within its communications department, adding that it still had to prove its commitment to the Tidö agreement going forward.

So why isn’t this causing a bigger government crisis?

We asked Evelyn Jones, a politics reporter for the Dagens Nyheter daily, to come on the Sweden in Focus podcast to explain it to us:

“The Sweden Democrats are the biggest party in this coalition, even though they’re not part of the government. So the government really needs them. It’s hard for them to just stop cooperating with the Sweden Democrats,” she said.

“The cooperation between the government parties and the Sweden Democrats has been going pretty smoothly since the last election – more smoothly than a lot of people thought. This is probably the biggest crisis so far, but how big it is, is hard to say.”

You can listen to the full interview with her and the rest of the Sweden in Focus podcast here.

In other news

If you are a descendant of a Sweden-born person and would like to find out more about them, there are ways to do that. I wrote this week about how to research your Swedish ancestry.

That guide was prompted by my interview with the chair of a community history group in a small parish in north-central Sweden, which has tried to get to the bottom of rumours that US mega star Taylor Swift’s ancestors hail from their village. I had so much fun writing this article.

The EU elections will be held on June 9th, but advance voting begins next week in Sweden. And poll cards are already being sent out, so if you’re eligible to vote you should receive yours soon.

Sweden’s consumer price index fell to 3.9 percent in April, below 4.0 percent for the first time in two years, reinforcing predictions that the central bank will keep lowering interest rates.

Sweden’s four-party government bloc has broken with the other parties in a parliamentary committee on public service broadcasting, adding what the opposition complains are “radically changed” proposals. How shocking are they?

Many people move to Sweden because of their partner’s career. Perhaps you’re one of these so-called “trailing spouses”. I’ve been asking readers in this situation how they’re settling in, and will have an article for you next week. There’s still time to answer our survey to share your experience.

Thanks for reading.

Have a good weekend,

Emma

Inside Sweden is our weekly newsletter for members which gives you news, analysis and, sometimes, takes you behind the scenes at The Local. It’s published each Saturday and with Membership+ you can also receive it directly to your inbox.

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