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2022 SWEDISH ELECTION

Sweden Democrats support hits three year low in new poll

Support for the populist Sweden Democrats is at its lowest point in three years, while the Green Party is back above the four percent threshold for entering parliament, according to a new poll.

Published: 27 April 2022 10:00 CEST

Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Åkesson has said his party has shifted position over Nato membership.

Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Åkesson has said his party has shifted position over Nato membership. Photo: TT

According to the poll, carried out by Ipsos for Dagens Nyheter, the share of respondents who said they would vote for the far-right party fell from 19 percent in March to 18 percent in April, putting it more or less in line with the 17.5 percent share of the vote it won in the 2018 election.

The share who said they would vote Green rose from three percent to four percent.

The biggest fall, however, was for the Social Democrats, who fell from the 33 percent high they saw in March in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, back to 30 percent in April.

“Right now there’s a big focus on the Nato issue and the Social Democrats’ positioning, which can impact on support for S [the Social Democrats],” Nicklas Källebring, an opinions analyst for Ipsos, told DN. “Among the party’s voters, there are people who oppose Swedish membership.”

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The Green Party, which has so far shown a stronger opposition to Nato membership, may be picking up some of those votes.

Källebring also believes that the the riots over the Easter weekend will have seen voters shift support from the Social Democrats to the Moderates and Sweden Democrats, drawn by their tougher messaging on crime.

The Liberal Party has also seen its support grow from closer to two percent to three percent, perhaps as a result of its new leader Johan Pehrson.

The Moderate Party's share of the vote stayed the same at 22 percent.

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INTERVIEW: 'We, as Moderates, should be good winners on Nato'

When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, Sweden’s opposition Moderate Party moved quickly to turn their longstanding support for Nato into a campaigning issue in the run-up this September’s election. With the Social Democrats due on Sunday to shift their position and back Nato, this will no longer be possible. But this does not worry Hans Wallmark, the Moderate Party’s foreign policy spokesperson.

“I think we, as Moderates, should behave as good winners, not bad winners,” he told The Local on Wednesday night. “The national interest is always bigger and more important than the party interest. So if this current government takes Sweden into Nato, we are going to hail it, and then hopefully, in four or five months from now, we’re going to continue the work as the new government.”

Wallmark has over the past month been closely involved in the Nato process, as the Moderate Party’s appointee on the Swedish government’s security policy analysis group, which is due to publish its report on Sweden’s security options on Friday.

“It is a good and comprehensive report,” he says of the result of the group’s six meetings, adding that, in his view, it is not a serious problem if the Left and the Green parties, which are both opposed to Nato membership, dissent from its conclusions.

He said that his party had been calling for the establishment of such a group since December 2020, when parliament voted for Sweden to have a so-called ‘Nato option’ as part of its security policy.

“But the government refused that, and then suddenly, some weeks before Easter, they invited us to this analysis group,” he remembers.

When the government launched the group before Easter, the Social Democrats still did not know which way they were going to swing, he believes.

“We could all then see that Finland was quite rapidly on its way to a Nato membership, so I think when the government invited the other parties, they, for that moment, didn’t really know what way they should take. But after a while, it was more and more clear that the Social Democratic Party was changing its mind due to the harsh reality of pressure from Finland.”

Even previous sceptics of Nato membership within the Social Democrats found it hard to justify staying out of the alliance if Finland joined. “Because if Finland joins Nato, then it would have been absurd, and I would say, defence strategically, totally impossible to stay outside.”

Wallmark argues that if Finland joined Nato and Sweden didn’t, the two countries would no longer be able to work together in the same way with common defence planning, severely weakening Sweden’s security.

“With Finland inside Nato, it would be quite impossible for Finland to have this openness in defence planning with Sweden, in the same way as it is with Norway and Denmark today. They can’t do the same defence planning with us as we do with Finland, because they are Nato members, and we are not.”

The purpose of the group then shifted from a stalling tactic, to a way of convincing the Social Democrat rank and file of a need to shift policy. “After a while, it turned out to be a tool for the Social Democratic Party to use to explain why they are changing position.”

Wallmark believes that pressure from Finland and the threat from Russia had both played a part in the Social Democrats’ decision, but he said electoral calculations had also come into play.

“I truly believe that the war since February 24th is one part of the equation, but also, I think that the risk of having Nato defence and security as election issues is absolutely also part of the equation that made the party change its mind,” he says.

As a result, he says, he fears that the Social Democrats might be joining the Nato security alliance for the wrong reasons, seeing it simply as protection for Sweden, rather than an organisation through which Sweden can take positive action to improve the security climate in Europe and the world.

“I think that we shouldn’t join Nato because we are afraid for our own skin. I think that we should join Nato for its own logic and reasons, and that is Article 5, and the common defence planning. So, therefore, I’m a little afraid that the Social Democrats are walking into Nato with the back in the front.”

“I think that the main reason for joining NATO is that Sweden can contribute to the common security in our part of the world. And Article 5 and the common defence planning have been good reasons for 20 years,” he adds. “And now we see how the Social Democrats are changing their mind in well, 20 hours or 20 days.”

Wallmark says that the Political Declaration of Solidarity the UK signed with Sweden on Wednesday should not be seen primarily as security for Sweden during the gap between applying to join Nato and becoming a member. It is, he argues, an expression of support Sweden has been pushing for ever since the UK left the European Union.

“It goes back much longer, and is much deeper, and of greater importance [than the Nato process], especially as a political signal that we really want to deepen the cooperation with the United Kingdom, even if the UK is outside and we are inside the EU,” he said. “The centre-right parties with the Moderates in the front have really worked for the government to establish this kind of arrangement.”

With Sweden’s Nato application likely to be announced within days, Wallmark believes that Sweden should be ready for a reaction from Russia. But he expects that Russia will end up accepting the new reality.

“I think it’s absolutely necessary to be prepared. But we can also see the pattern. Nato has extended, it is now 30 countries… and Russia has barked and showed publicly how disappointed it is, but they have, in the end, accepted the reality.”

“So I think that we absolutely can see things happening in cyber attacks or fake news. But in the end, I think that they are going to accept it.”

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