Sweden’s Political Warning The Sweden Democrats finish third on an anti-immigration platform.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/swedens-political-warning-1536531909
Swedes went to the polls on Sunday and although it will take some time for a ruling coalition to emerge, the biggest immediate winner appears to be the party that won’t form a government. The Sweden Democrats, born as a far-right political movement and now an anti-immigration party, garnered a little under 18% of the vote. That third-place finish is their best electoral result.
The governing party is still likely to be either the first-place center-left Social Democrats or the second-place center-right Moderate Party, the anchors of Swedish politics for decades. But they will govern with reduced vote tallies, and no coalition is likely to enjoy a majority in parliament.
As in so many recent European elections, the authority of mainstream parties is eroding. The Moderates were the biggest losers Sunday compared to 2014, down 3.5 points to 20%. The ruling Social Democrats have been hemorrhaging voters for years. Their better-than-expected result Sunday is that they finished at 28%, three percentage points down from the last election but well shy of the 40% tally they used to achieve.
The Sweden Democrats have won over many disaffected working-class voters, as the party’s share of the vote has risen from under 6% in 2010. Others have shifted to the Left coalition, a far-left faction whose vote total also rose more than two percentage points Sunday.
Many commentators—and more than a few Swedish and European Union politicians—will mourn growing support for the “far right” by Sweden’s historically tolerant voters. That misses much of the story.
The Sweden Democrats have gained support in particular since Sweden’s decision to accept the highest number of Middle Eastern migrants relative to population of any European country in the 2015 crisis. And in this campaign the mainstream parties matched the Sweden Democrats with get-tough immigration pledges of their own. The Sweden Democrats, meanwhile, hew to conventional views on the need to spend more on Sweden’s welfare state.
What’s really on display is weakening public trust in mainstream politicians and parties. Voters increasingly doubt that the Social Democrats or Moderates will deliver on promises to stem immigration or reduce waiting times for doctors. Maybe the Sweden Democrats would fail if they take power, but they haven’t been promising and failing for years.
The Sweden Democrats trace their origins to a neo-Nazi group, and while the party’s current leaders claim to have purged those elements, they bear watching for the uglier forms of nationalist sentiment. The other parties have pledged to lock the Sweden Democrats out of any governing coalition. But if those parties don’t start delivering on campaign promises, more and bigger electoral upsets are inevitable.
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