Swedes Face Fateful September Election

At a time in European politics when several countries have moved toward broad governing coalitions, including Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and France, politics in Sweden remains divided along a traditional line between the right and the left.

In the campaign leading up to the 13 September election, the eight parties in the Swedish Parliament fall into two four-party alliances. The incumbent government, consisting of the Moderates, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals, with parliamentary support from the Sweden Democrats, is trailing the leftist coalition of the Social Democrats, the Left Party, the Greens and the Center Party.

According to the poll-tracking website val.digital, the opposition is more than nine percentage points ahead of the right-of-center alliance. If it prevails on election day, Sweden could get its most radically leftist government since at least the 1930s.

Their momentum with voters comes amid promises from both sides of the ideological divide that clarify the distinct choices that the electorate is faced with.

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Taxes: Up or Down?

On the right side, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and his Moderates are touting his government's record from the past four years of lowering the tax burden on households and businesses. The party promises more tax cuts, especially for working families.

The Christian Democrats have no detailed tax cuts to offer, but they, the Liberals and the Sweden Democrats have all voted for tax cuts in the past. Therefore, Kristersson's government can confidently pledge more of the same if it wins in September.

By contrast, the leftist opposition is promising to raise several existing taxes, as well as to introduce new ones. These tax increases are well known, with the Social Democrat candidate for finance minister announcing some of them already nine months ago. Between the Social Democrats, the Left Party and the Greens are proposals for higher taxes on personal income, small businesses, antibiotic drugs and carbon dioxide.

They also want to reintroduce taxes that have been repealed in the past, including taxes on air travel, real estate, wealth, gifts, inheritance and death.

According to the Swedish Taxpayers Federation, the value of all the tax increases proposed by the left is SEK145bn ($14.9bn). This is approximately equal to 2% of Swedish GDP and would solidify Sweden as one of Europe's most heavily taxed economies.

The two alliances in the Swedish parliament also differ on how they want to see the welfare state organized. The Left and Green parties are outspoken about more centralized control, which translates into the marginalization and possible elimination of private health-care providers and private school choice.

The right-of-center alliance, on the other hand, remains faithful to the principle that patients should be able to choose between public and private health clinics. They also maintain their support for Sweden's limited but well-working school choice system.

The Left in the Lead

With such clear ideological choices before them, Swedish voters have thus far been clear about wanting higher taxes. In their opinion poll average, val.digital gives 53.6% of voter support to the left. Of that support, the Social Democrats get 32% while 8.3% prefer the Left Party. The Greens are polling at 7.1% and the Center Party at 6.2%.

On the right side, the Sweden Democrats command the largest voter support at 19.7%. The Moderates – the party led by Prime Minister Kristersson – stand at 16.7%, while the Christian Democrats are at 5.9%.

The big problem for Kristersson and his alliance is that their fourth party, the Liberals, have lost so much voter support in the last year that they are very unlikely to win any seats at all in the next Parliament.

Currently at 1.8% in the val.digital opinion-poll average, they are far from clearing the 4% parliamentary threshold. Unless they can more than double their voter share, without taking votes from their alliance partners, any vote cast for them will count toward zero parliamentary seats for Kristersson as prime minister.

If the left wins in accordance with current polls, Magdalena Andersson, the Social Democrat candidate for prime minister, would command support from 195 of the 349 members of Parliament. This should give her a bright outlook for the next four years, but her leftist coalition is plagued by two major problems. The first is the strong position that the Left Party has with its 8.3% of prospective votes.

This means that Andersson cannot get elected without support from the Left. That support, however, comes at a price. As it has made clear in its election platform, the party wants seats in her cabinet in exchange for supporting Andersson for prime minister.

The Swedish Left Party has never before participated in government. Historically, it was marginalized even by the Social Democrats. In the past, the Left Party has used the names Communist Party of Sweden and Leftist Communist Party. The current name, the Left Party, was adopted after the fall of the Soviet Union.

However, the party has retained a strong favorability toward communism. As recently as 2012, it had a leader, Lars Ohly, who was unrepentantly faithful to the ideals of communism.

According to its election manifesto, the Left is aggressively pushing for the elimination of private alternatives within health care and education. It also demands significant increases in health-care spending, government price controls on groceries and a national rent-control program for leased apartments.

The Greens share many of the Left Party's policy ideas, including school-choice restrictions. They also pledge increased funding to the welfare state in general and new family-oriented housing benefits.

The Social Democrats are mildly skeptical of such radical changes to the welfare state as well as of the plethora of tax increases that the two smaller parties propose. But their bigger, second problem in forming a government is the Center Party.

Unlike the Left and the Greens, they campaign on issues that are more aligned with the right-of-center government. They want to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses in part by cutting taxes and by simplifying Sweden's hire-and-fire laws. The contrast to the Left and the Greens is amplified by the Center Party's emphasis on decentralization and increased choice in health care and education.

As if to amplify its distance from the Left Party, back in January the Center Party announced that it will never support a government that includes the Left Party.

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Appealing to Arab Voters

The Center Party is an anomaly in its current alliance. Before the 2014 election, it was part of the right-of-center bloc but shifted to the left to mark its opposition to the Sweden Democrats and their immigration-skeptical policies. After actively supporting the Social Democrat-led government from 2014 to 2022, the Center Party joined the Social Democrats in opposition to Kristersson’s alliance after the 2022 election.

At this point, it is difficult to predict how the Social Democrats could confidently form a government, with such disparate and mutually exclusive backing. In an effort to increase her party's vote share and thereby its post-election negotiating strength, Andersson has since May led an election campaign in Arabic. It is aimed at one of Sweden's largest immigrant demographics. Her message to them is that the Social Democrats want increased support for families.

Election campaigns in foreign languages are legal in Sweden, and the political parties have historically provided information in the languages of the largest immigration demographics. In the 1960s, party platform brochures in Finnish were made available in cities with large numbers of Finnish immigrants. In the 1970s, similar information was distributed in Turkish, Serbian and Greek.

Today, with more than 27% of the population being foreign-born or having two foreign-born parents, campaign material in the immigrants' native languages has become more prominent than ever. The Social Democrats, with the best network of campaign workers, are likely to be more successful than the other parties in rallying immigrants based on such native-language campaign material.

The alternatives before Swedish voters are clear: higher taxes and a more centralized welfare state, or lower taxes and more decentralized, choice-oriented health care and education. The sharp differences between the left and the right will translate into very different numbers in terms of GDP growth, employment and personal income.

At the same time, there are issues where the right and the left are firmly in agreement. One of them is military expansion in the wake of Sweden's accession to NATO. There is widespread support in Parliament for a multi-year expansion of national defense appropriations.

Another issue on which there is broad agreement across the ideological aisle is Sweden joining the eurozone. All major parties in Parliament have, one way or the other, expressed support for Swedish accession. However, due to general popular opposition to the euro, this issue has quietly been deferred to the next Parliament, which convenes after the September election.