Sweden: post-Election Stalemate

The New York Times has some Swedish post election thoughts.

Prior to getting into the article, it must be reminded that the various Swedish political parties coalesce around 3 distinct groups.

You have the center-right group called the Alliance. They're made up of 4 parties: Moderate, Centre, Liberals and Christian Democrats.

You have the left group called the Red Greens. They're made up of Social Democrats and the Green Party with help from the Left Party.

Then you have the far right group called the Sweden Democrats. The Alliance and Red Greens have said they won't negotiate with the Sweden Democrats to form a government.

As the article states, the problem with the post-election is that nobody has a majority. The red-green alliance has 144 of the 349 seats. The Alliance has 143 seats. The Sweden Democrats have 62. So that's the 349 seats. To have the majority, you need 175.

The New York Times lays out 4 potential scenarios to resolve this stalemate.

First: The Red Greens are able to convince the Liberals and Christian Democrats to switch sides. The two control 42 seats between them. That would get the red-green alliance to 186. You'd need both of them to switch over.

Second: Though both alliances have said they won't form an alliance with the Sweden Democrats, there could be negotiations with the center-right where the Sweden Democrats vote for this alliance to lead the nation. They'd need to get something back in return.

Third: Neither alliance needs a majority as long as the majority support one of the alliances to form a government. So there would be a need for an agreement between the two major alliances on who gets to form the government.

Fourth: After four votes to form a parliament, another election will occur.

To me, for right now, the second and third scenarios are off the table. I don't think anyone would be willing to align themselves with the Sweden Democrats at this point (though it could happen if another election creates different splits). And I would think that with such a close vote, one of the alliances would be more than willing to go for another round of voting to see if things might give them a larger portion of the seats. You may as well gamble and hope you win a few more seats in the second round. If one of the alliances was able to get a significant higher seat count than the other (more than the 1 seat difference), maybe you start having more political power to say your alliance should run the government.

So I guess that means I'm leaning towards either the Red Greens are able to steal a 2 parties from the Alliance (first scenario) or we go for another election (fourth scenario).

I think all the articles I've read about Sweden politics states that the Sweden Democrats have neo-Nazi backgrounds. However, none spent the time to bring a little history lesson. The New York Times was kind enough to write a few sentences about the history of the Sweden Democrats. Here's a brief quote:

The Sweden Democrats, founded in 1988, grew from southern Swedish protest parties with ties to neo-Nazis and a racist movement called Bevara Sverige Svenskt (“Keep Sweden Swedish”). They wanted to prohibit adoption from outside Europe and repatriate all immigrants who had arrived since the 1970s, Mr. Nilsson said, adding, “They didn’t want dark-skinned people in Sweden.”