High after series of violence – ahead of elections in Sweden – right-wing populists on the rise

According to polls a week before the election, the party, which emerged from the far-right milieu and led by Jimmie Akesson, would become Sweden’s second-strongest political force for the first time in its history at up to 22 percent, behind Andersson’s party. Social Democrats, who are just under 30 percent. The Conservatives, Christian Democrats and Liberals are willing to work with the Swedish Democrats, but do not see them as part of a future government.

overcome turbulence
Andersson is the woman at the head of government in Swedish history. After the resignation of her predecessor Stefan Löfven, she faced initial difficulties and had to operate with a purely social-democratic minority cabinet after the Greens withdrew from the government. Despite a precarious majority – Andersson sometimes depended on the support of a wild MP – she managed to keep the government stable during the turbulent months of her reign. Andersson generated broad party consensus on Sweden’s NATO membership, which only the Greens and the Left voted against.

Their first challenger is conservative Ulf Kristersson, who wants to form a right-wing government with the Christian Democrats. In any case, Kristersson would need the support of the Swedish Democrats and probably the Liberals for such a variant – provided the right-wing bloc gets more votes than the parties that previously supported Magdalena Andersson as prime minister. Among them is Annie Lööf’s Center Party, whose party used to belong to the bourgeois “Alliance” of former Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. Among other things, their clear delineation of the Swedish Democrats, who emerged from the neo-Nazi milieu, led to a temporary change of party.

Right party no longer a sleazeball
Jimmie Akesson’s party made it to the Swedish parliament for the first time in 2010 and was for a long time barred from any cooperation from the other parties. In the parliamentary elections in 2018, the Swedish Democrats became the third largest party in the Swedish Riksdag. Since then, the rejection of the former political sleazeballs has clearly crumbled. Three of the traditional ‘bourgeois’ parties can in principle imagine governmental cooperation with the Swedish Democrats.

According to observers, the discussion about gangs in Sweden recently played into the hands of the Swedish Democrats. During the summer there was a series of violent crimes related to organized crime in Sweden. The most recent example was the deadly shooting at a shopping center in Malmö in mid-August. A controversial topic in the election campaign was the planned reorganization of taxes and benefits. The parties on the left want to increase aid payments, while the parties on the right want to limit them. The Conservatives and the Swedish Democrats also focused on immigration and integration.

High energy prices as the theme of the election campaign
Recently, high energy prices have become a campaign problem, especially in southern Sweden prices are rising rapidly. The opposition blamed the government’s anti-nuclear policies for the price hikes. The government, the Greens and the Left Party saw the gas restriction by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the European electricity market for this. The possible construction of new reactors after the closure of several Swedish nuclear power plants in recent years was already a topic in the election campaign.