Sweden: Elections Sept 9th/Sweden Democrats

In early July, Bloomberg had an article up about the Sweden Democrats and there polling.

At the time of the article, the Novus, Kantar Sifo and Ipsos polls had the party at 20%. Four year prior, they were polling at 13%. The top party, Social Democrats, stood at 25%.

There were some reasons provided for this surge.

1. Too large of an influx of migrants, which has gotten too much of a focus.
2. Fear that immigrants are taking jobs away from Swedes.
3. Welfare state deterioration, specifically health care.

A month later another poll was taken. Express UK reports that Sweden Democrats are now polling at 22% while the Social Democrats dipped to 24%. At the moment, the Sweden Democrats won't have an impact on the formation of a government. According to the article:


According to the Novus poll, which surveyed the voting intentions of 4,808 people aged 18 and above, a leftist coalition formed by the Social Democrats, Greens and the socialist Left party would be able to form a minority government with 38 percent of the vote.

The Alliance, formed by the Moderates, Centre Party, Liberals and Christian Democrats, would fall just short with 36 percent.

The article doesn't break out all the polling numbers, but Wikipedia does have some polling data by party:

Social Democrats: 23.8%
Greens: 4.2%
Left: 9.7%

That equals 37.7%.

Moderates: 19.0%
Centre Party: 8.9%
Liberals: 5.0%
Christian Democrats: 3.5%

That equals 36.4%. From what I've read, 4% is the threshold so maybe things are rounded up, which is why the Christian Democrats are added to the coalition list.

If the Sweden Democrats over-performed their polls, which I think could happen as I suspect that there might be a tendency to deny that one is voting for a party that has a neo-Nazi background, the Greens or Christian Democrats or both could fail to win seats in parliament. I guess that could provide the Sweden Democrats some power as they could determine which side to try to undermine. With the vote so close between the two coalitions, I suspect it wouldn't be that hard for the Sweden Democrats to sway things towards one or the other.

One of the big issues around the election has to deal with crime. Reuters has an article about crime in Sweden:

Swedish authorities will hold an emergency meeting on Wednesday over a wave of gang shootings in cities that have made crime a central issue for voters ahead of September’s election. Sweden has one of the highest levels of lethal gun violence in Europe, World Health Organisation data showed. Police say an increase in gang violence is mitigated by a decrease in other types of lethal crime.

This answers the question I had in a prior blog:

Question: has murder rates increased in run-down suburbs, but decreased in wealthier parts? That would explain why murder rates are flat even though Reuters mentioning the doubling of absolute murders in Stockholm and Malmo, driven by gangs. 

So yes, crime is increasing in immigrant areas and declining in other areas.