Election Time

Since I am a political scientist, maybe I should discuss the election in Sweden this Sunday. I think there must be someone out there that find it interesting? Anyone? Well you will still get my analysis of the situation. For the past couple months it looked like the race was over for the ruling coalition. The polls showed a gap of 10 % or higher in favor of a red-green coalition, often even with there own majority. During these four years it even looked like the two smaller parties, the christian democrats and the center party, took turn being below the dreaded 4 % line to enter parliament. The stage was set to change government to either a social democratic - green coalition with support from the left party and/or feminist initiative (this was the speculations after their alright showing in the European Parliament election in June) or a red-green minority coalition that later during the term would negotiate one of the former smaller Alliance parties to join. That was until Friday.

Friday night the Swedish newspaper SvD published a poll showing that the gap between the blocks had halved to 4,5 %. Yesterday evening the Swedish channel TV4 released another poll also indicating a halved gap, this withbthe numbers of 5 %, but the interesting thing to note was that during the last two days of the polling period (Friday to Sunday or how they measured that) the gap was only indicated to be 2,5 or 2,9 or something like that. What happened during that period? Three different debates. I didn't see any of them since I haven't felt excited about the election until now and that is why I'm writing about it now. What I saw reflected was that the Social democratic leader is failing to be the strong leader the party wanted. What caused it seemed to be his inability to answer yes or no to renew the nuclear power reactors that are in dire need of replacing being to old. It's further complicated when he as a former union leader in the industry sector where he was outspoken in favor of new reactor in order to secure the Swedish industry that is heavily reliant on electricity. The final straw is that he plans to form a government with the green party that have clearly stated that they will close one or two reactors during the coming term. So the people want to know, what does he want? And he fails to answer that question. It doesn't help that the left party has clearly stated they will not back down on closing private schools if they form a government (people even talks about expropriation) even going as far as sending a letter to those companies that they should be prepared to leave signed by the party leader.

The green party then? Well, lets say that they have in their manifest a part about abolishing economic growth since it push forward the destruction of the planet due to its limited resources (not taking into the fact that economic growth often is more about refining resources or create substitutes for the resources due to technological progress). In theory it is an important issue, but if you also claim to make sure the welfare state works as is you are pretty much lying. The welfare state and obligation need growth otherwise it collapse, it also goes for the pensions and if you don't have a plan for that or are upfront with it you will pretty much scare away potential voters. From the social democrats that is, the green party seems to live on them. So all in all, the social democrats falls below 30 % while the potential coalition partners rise toward 10 % coupled with inability to show a direction, I actually believe that the middle voters (or the social democratic right.wing) actually jumps ship to the Alliance since they feel that that is a much more reliable alternative. Had the Social democrats still been around 35-40 % I think they would have stayed since the weight behind the party could pretty much force most crazy ideas out of the way, but not below 30 % and what appear as a weak leader.

The Swedish democrats will still make sure there isn't a majority government, but most people probably don't care at the moment.