The polls opened this Sunday in Sweden at 08:00 local time (07:00 in Lisbon) for Swedes to vote in the country’s general elections. The 7.7 million Swedes summoned to the polls will be able to vote until 8:00 p.m. local time (7:00 p.m. in Lisbon) for the election of the 349 members of the Riksdagen, the unicameral Parliament.
Polls give Social Democrat Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson’s party a slight lead, placing the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD) as the second force.
Until a few years ago isolated in the political landscape of the Scandinavian country, the nationalist and anti-immigration party of the Swedish Democrats (SD), can now ally with the traditional right and be part of an agreement in Parliament to form a government.
Heir to a neo-Nazi group in the late 1980s, the party at the time garnered less than 1% of voting intentions and only entered Parliament in 2010, but the social problems plaguing Swedish society today forced to present today as the third or even the second largest party.
Ricardo Alexandre, deputy director of TSF and editor of Internacional, considers it “very unlikely” that Sweden will have a government led by the extreme right. “What the opinion polls tell us is that the process of forming the next government will be long and complex,” he analyzes.
Deaths in the settling of scores between criminal gangs – which has become a serious social problem – top the concerns of Swedes, polls show, followed by health and immigration.
Despite several measures taken by the Social Democratic Party (S) Government against the gangs, including harsher sentences and increased police capacity, deaths and injuries continue to mount: since January 1, 48 people have been shot dead, three more than the total. of 2021.
In this context, with an anti-immigration discourse allied to the defense of the traditional welfare state, the SD managed to conquer the working classes, the retired and the less qualified.
Swedish elections have always been about the welfare state, the economy and employment, but these have been “erased”, in addition to the issue of gang crimes fighting for control of the drug and arms market, the issue of immigration/integration, which has generated one of the main controversies during the campaign.
Although there are still uncertainties about the results, the rapprochement between the right and the extreme right has reduced the debate on who could form the government in Sweden to two blocs.
A likely post-election alliance will unite the Social Democrats currently in power with the Greens, the (ex-communist) Left Party and the Center Party, with this more left-wing bloc amassing between 48.6% and 52.6% of votes, according to the most recent polls.
The right/extreme right bloc would include the conservative party of the Moderates (M), allied with the Liberals (L) and the Christian Democrats (KD), with the direct or indirect support of the extreme right of the Swedish Democrats (SD), who as a whole have between 47.1% and 49.6% of voting intentions.
The outgoing prime minister, Madalena Andersson, in office a year after succeeding Stefan Löfven, who resigned after seven years, remains the leader of the party that inspires the most confidence among voters to continue in office, with 55% of positive views, well ahead of his conservative rival for the moderates, Ulf Kristersson (32%), but analysts predict that the election results will lead to long and difficult negotiations to form a government.
The previous elections, in 2018, led to a long political crisis, with four months to form a minority government led by the Social Democrats.
Sweden, which is in the process of joining NATO and will take over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union on January 1, has been ruled since 2014 by the Social Democrats, the country’s main party since the 1930s.
Source: TSF
