1. The trend for LO (workers union) members to abandon the left continues. In 1994 66% of LO-members voted for Social-Democrats. This election it was 51%.
Many have gone to other left of center parties. But not all. In total, the share of LO members who voted for any left alternative has declined since 1994.
2. As late as 2002 44% of Swedish voters consider themselves left and 34% right. After the Moderate party done away with much of the libertarian parts of their platform and rhetoric, this changed.
In this election, 42% of Swedish voters consider themselves right, whereas only 38% consider themselves left.
The right has gone from a -10 to +4 in self-identification.
Of course what "right" means in Sweden is very different from what right means in the U.S. But there are meaningful differences in terms of which path you want to take society and how you self-identify. American observers of Sweden should keep this trend in mind.
3. While Sweden-Democrats are over-represented among the unemployed and other types of welfare recipients, my calculations using the exit polls and SCB is that the majority of their voters are in fact employed. An additional large group are students in college or high-school.
Overall among young men and first time voters SD does well, which probably means they will continue to grow at least for a while.
4. It seems hard to poll a party who those in polite company consider racist.
This is the third time the exit poll under-estimated the Sweden-Democrats. On average the Sweden-Democrat seem to get 25-30% more in final votes than when someone personally asks them who they voted for.
The normal polls underestimated their support by about one tenth, or in absolute terms 0.5%.
Here is how the polling firms did in their last poll:
United Minds: (internet panel) Overestimated by 25%
Synovate: Overestimated by 4%, got it almost exactly right.
Demoskop: Underesimated by 11%
Skop: Underesimated by 12%
Novus: Underestimated by 25%
Sifo: Underestimated by 33%
For all of September, here is how the polling firms did compared to the average of the polling firms in terms of percentage points:
Sifo: -1%
Novus: -0.6%
Skop: -0.6%
Demoskop: -0.45%
Synovate: +0.3%
United Minds: +0.7%
One conclusion is that United Minds internet based poll overestimated the support for SD, because SD is overrepresented among internet savvy people in a way that United Minds has been able to sufficiently control for through sampling weights.
Synovate seems to have gotten it right this time, either through luck or superior polling methods.
The other 4 polling firms under-estimate the support for SD by about one fifth. So if tomorrow they tell us SD has 4% support, the true support is 5%.
5. There is a weird tradition among Swedish political scientists to claim that party leader does not much influence election outcomes (they claim this with confidence, even though we have no way of identifying the counter-factual).
My instincts is that this is false. Just like Americans, Swedes judge the competence and character of the party leaders, in particular the prime minister candidates.
Case in point:
A historic 45% of Moderate party voters mentioned Fredrik Reinfeldt as important for their choice.
In comparison Social Democratic party leader Mona Sahlin only got 19%
Sweden is no longer a Social Democratic country. But nor is it a moderate, classically liberal right of center country as some commentators seem to believe. Instead it is now roughly evenly divided between the left and the right. What made the right crush the Social Democrats was that we have a popular, competent leader, while Mona Sahlin is dim and does not convey confidence.
This could easily change 4 years from now.
(A sign of danger for the left and right both is that 31 year old SD-Leader Jimmy Åkesson is as popular with his party as Carl Bildt was with the Moderates in 1998)
6. In an election where the left block was decimated, 77% of non-European immigrants voted for the left. Immigrants in Sweden are very leftist.
Of native Swedes, I estimate that only 42% voted for any of the 3 left parties. If it were not for leftist support from immigrants, Sweden would now have a majority right government.
For now, the non-European immigrant share of the voting population is relatively small (around 2%). But it is growing each election. The libertarians who want to increase immigration based on irresponsible dogma are swiftly destroying the prospects of Sweden to take a more free market path.
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