This text was first published at part of Stockholm News’ weekly e-newsletter 2012-03-18
Dear reader
Two and a half years remains before the next election but newspapers nevertheless publish opinion polls almost every week as if they were world news. There is logic to it; describing long term political processes is difficult in daily newspapers. Opinion polls show actual numbers, it is easy to read and they make good headlines. But at the same time, too far reaching conclusions are often drawn from these polls. In the newsmagazine Fokus one could even read the following analysis last Friday: “Eight weeks ago, it seemed like the center-right alliance would win the 2014 election on walk-over. Now almost everyone think Stefan Löfven (Social Democratic chairman, my remark) will win on walk over”. If this statement is true, then ‘everyone’ needs to think again and stop being so short-term in their political thinking.
New political situation – or not?
”The government is tired and is out of ideas and the opposition has gotten new energy and determination after the shifts in leadership in their different parties”. This has become the conventional wisdom among analysts lately. And it is not totally without justification.
Being a four-party coalition government is not easy. The three smaller parties in the alliance see an increasing need to profile themselves now that they all dangerously near the four percent threshold in most opinion polls. The Moderate party has made pragmatism their main ideology when it comes to all issues but stable public finances and creation of new job opportunities. They seem happy to just run the country at the moment. Prime Minister Reinfeldt has even said that he wants to issue a “warning for visions”. Even though I believe this pragmatic, vision-less view has rather big support among the voters; it still doesn’t work for the three small parties. This tension is a problem for the government and might be even more so when the 2014 election gets closer.
At the same time, the main opposition party, the Social Democrats, has pulled themselves together after their terrible 2011. The new chairman Stefan Löfven gives a much more stable and pragmatic impression than his predecessor Håkan Juholt. He also seems to have gathered a competent team around him. All this together might lead to the conclusion that there is an advantage for the opposition two and a half years before the next election.
But there are also some things which points in the the opposite direction.
The Social Democrats might have gained 6-7 percentage points (or more) since Löfven took over but that was from unrealistically low numbers due to a very low confidence in Håkan Juholt. A bounce upwards was almost inevitable. Their internal split, which caused all the problems when first Sahlin and then Juholt resigned as party leaders, has however not ceased to exist. It will be very interesting to see if the new leadership manages to keep the different fractions under control.
Moreover; most opinion polls show that it is very even between the blocs and considering the fact that the opposition is normally front runners between the elections, this would actually speak for the government coalition. Most polls* show that neither bloc would get a majority and, when governing in minority, the parties need to be as close to each other as possible. I would say that the center-right parties are much less split than the red-green opposition. The latter would find it much more difficult to govern in a minority position. The Left Party has for example already said that they will arrange a membership voting about a potential red-green platform.
The Prime Minister has indeed looked hollow-eyed, tired and uninspired lately, even with his standard. Now we know that this might partially be due to his separation from his wife Fillipa Reinfeldt. They have been a couple since the early 1990’s and have three kids together. The separation was made public just ten days ago but it is not a wild guess that their relationship had been strained for a while. If Reinfeldt on the emotionally level can get through the worst phase, he might gain ground again.
It is perhaps logical that media call the Social Democratic raise in the polls a success but they still show catastrophic numbers with their terms – especially considering they have been in opposition for five and a half years. Just because they were on an even lower level two months ago does not mean everything is fine now.
Swedish politics is very unpredictable at the moment. I will not make the same mistake as many others and try to predict an election result 30 months in advance, but we can be pretty sure that ‘everyone’ will have the chance to change their minds several times.
* The very last poll, published Sunday, actually showed a majority for the red-green bloc; they have a seven percent advantage over the Center-right alliance.
