Explainer: Tough conversations attract winners in Sweden’s recent elections
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STOCKHOLM, Sept 6 (Reuters) – Tough talks and trade-offs await the winning side in Sweden’s parliamentary election with the ruling centre-left and their right-wing challengers facing weeks of uncertainty over whether they would come through.
Opinion polls ahead of the vote on September 11 show that the social democrat Magdalena Andersson and her allies are neck and neck with a right-wing bloc where Ulf Kristersson, leader of the conservative Moderates, is the main candidate to depose her as prime minister.
The election and process for forming a government is explained below.
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WHO ARE THE RENOWNERS?
Andersson, the first woman to become Sweden’s prime minister after Stefan Lofven unexpectedly resigned last year, is more popular than her own party and the most trusted elected political leader, opinion polls show.
Still, the four-party center-left bloc that would favor her as prime minister is only loose, although the Social Democrats are by far the biggest player.
Meanwhile, their allies, the Greens, have polled perilously close to the 4 percent threshold to win parliamentary seats, as have the right-wing liberals, creating uncertainty.
On the right, Kristersson’s Moderates compete with the Sweden Democrats’ anti-immigration populists to be the bloc’s largest party.
Recent polls show that the Sweden Democrats are ahead of the Moderates, which raises doubts about Kristersson’s plans to become prime minister in coalition with the Christian Democrats, but with the support of the Sweden Democrats and the Liberals in the Riksdag.
Kristersson, a career politician for years overshadowed by former prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who advocated a more centrist and pro-immigration agenda, has said he is the only leader who can unite the right.
“It won’t be easy, but it’s completely doable,” Kristersson told Reuters on the campaign trail in Gothenburg. “We already sit together and we can talk to each other.”
Still, the strong support for Jimmie Åkesson’s Sweden Democrats, founded in part decades ago by activists with neo-Nazi and white supremacist connections, makes them increasingly difficult to ignore when considering a right-wing government.
WHAT ARE THE MAIN PROBLEMS?
Gang violence, with shootings spreading from the biggest cities, has taken center stage in the campaign, with all sides pledging to further tighten legislation and expand the police force. Read more
The Sweden Democrats above all link crime with the influx of immigrants in recent decades. About 20% of Sweden’s 10.5 million inhabitants were born abroad, according to government statistics, with Syrians the largest group.
Sweden has kept down immigration since the refugee crisis in 2015, during two consecutive mandate periods of social democratic rule. The right would go further, especially the Sweden Democrats who have listed 30 reforms they say would cut asylum approvals to almost zero.
In recent months, rising inflation has lifted the cost of living crisis to the top of the agenda. Read more
Andersson’s government has promised 90 billion kroner ($8.4 billion) in compensation to households and businesses for sky-high energy prices, while the right also has plans to soften the blow in the short term and build more nuclear reactors.
Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in a move supported by almost all parties after the Social Democrats dropped their 73-year opposition and removed the issue from the election agenda. Read more
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE VOTE?
As Sweden grapples with several crises – the Ukraine war, sky-high inflation and energy costs and a rapidly greening economy – all governments will be looked to for stability, something that may be in short supply even after election day.
For the Social Democrats, the challenge will be to reconcile the conflicting demands of their centre-left bloc.
The bloc includes the former Communist Left Party, whose leader is demanding a place in the government, and the center-right Center Party, which has ruled out supporting a cabinet that includes the left or negotiating budgets with them.
On the right, the picture is just as uncertain.
The Liberals have ruled out supporting a government that includes the Sweden Democrats, who in turn have demanded influence over politics in proportion to their size in a written agreement, if they are not invited into the government.
The Social Democrats must find common ground with parties that have conflicting ideas in areas such as taxation and energy, while the right faces similar obstacles, such as Moderate plans for unemployment benefits, a move rejected by the Sweden Democrats.
Once a political pariah, the Sweden Democrats have charted a course into the right-wing political mainstream, although they remain anathema to the centre-left, and polls suggest they could outnumber Kristersson’s Moderates.
This would hardly propel Sweden Democrats leader Åkesson to the premiership given the reluctance of the other right-wing parties, but it would be more difficult to exclude him from the government and leave Kristersson in a weak position to negotiate policy.
It took around 130 days to form a new government after the 2018 election and although it should go faster this time, given that the Sweden Democrats are now more firmly in the right-wing camp, the negotiations are still expected to be long and tough.
“It is not obvious which parties would contribute to a government, even if that party’s bloc won a majority in parliament,” says Nicholas Aylott, associate professor at Södertorn University.
“It complicates things and may take some time to resolve.”
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Reporting by Niklas Pollard; additional reporting by Johan Ahlander in Gothenburg and Ilze Filks for TV, editing by Ed Osmond
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