Sweden’s establishment is afraid of the voters

A new poll came out showing the Sweden Democrats to be the number one party in Sweden right now. That’s good news for reformer right.

Sweden’s always been an American conservative poster child for European socialist decline. Well, it turns out that a number of people in Sweden are seeing the effects of today’s left, with its multicultural, open borders, unlimited social spending ways, and they don’t like it, either.

The party opposed to the steady decline of the country, the Sweden Democrats, has doubled its support in each of the last few elections. They were a fringe 1% party back in 2002, but they’ve grown to 2.9, then 5.7, and finally last year jumped to 12.9%, making them the #3 party with 49 out of 349 seats. This gain came mostly at the expense of the Moderate Party, the main right wing party in Sweden, whose coalition had won the last two elections, but lost last year to the socialists.

However with the growth of the Sweden Democrats, neither of the main coalition options had enough votes for a majority government. The Social Democrats made deals with the Green Party and the Left party, but that’s only 159 of the needed 175 votes. The Moderate Party feared that a new, early election might give the Sweden Democrats a chance to wipe them out, so the main right party made a deal with the main left party. The Moderate Party is supporting the Social Democratic Party on all confidence votes for this Riksdag. That ensures the Social Democrats will be able to govern all the way to 2018 unless they call an early election.

Sweden’s right, therefore, is dealing with an establishment much like America’s right. The establishment right tells you they’re different from the left, they tell you that those right-wing crazies can’t govern, but as soon as they get elected they cut deals to give the left what they want. However there wasn’t even any failure theater in Sweden. They made the deal out in the open.

So now the electorate is reacting. Sweden Democrats had their record high in the last election at 12.9%. The YouGov poll put them at 25.2%, a doubling, just like the last few elections. The Moderate Party had their worst showing in a decade last time at 23.2%. The new poll drops them further to 21%. Even the Social Democrats are down to 23.4% in the poll.

Thanks to the deal by the Moderate Party, an election isn’t required for another 3 years. They’re hoping the electorate’s anger will cool off in that time, and so the Sweden Democrats will fade. They’re afraid of the voters, and hiding out, hoping it will be safe to come out later.

Only time will tell if this strategy will work.

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