Since the Sweden Democrats are an ethno-nationalist party with a track record of pointing to immigration as the source of all of the country’s ills, it didn’t come as a big surprise that, in the wake of their first-ever electoral decrease, top party members blamed immigrant voters.
Some blamed new citizens – those who had been granted citizenship over the past four Tidö years, against the wishes of the Sweden Democrats, who wanted a total freeze on new citizenships.
Others targeted a specific ethnic-religious minority group (guess which one!), saying that their votes had influenced, or swayed the election.
This includes Sweden Democrat party leader Jimmie Åkesson, who, in his post-election press conference this morning, said that the Social Democrats and the Left Party "mobilised Islamist voters."
Perhaps more surprising was that a Moderate MP (admittedly, one on the rightward end of the party) did something similar. In an article in the British magazine The Spectator, Fredrik Kärrholm referred the 97.6 percent vote share of the Social Democrats and Left Party in Malmö’s immigrant-heavy Rosengård neighbourhood as “Saddam Hussein numbers.”
Public broadcaster SVT and The Local’s Richard Orange did a fact check on some of these claims, finding that while the claim about who new citizens voted for was completely unfounded and, in fact, unverifiable, Swedish voters with “foreign” backgrounds did indeed heavily favour the Social Democrats and the Left Party – the two largest parties on the opposite side of the political spectrum from the Sweden Democrats.
To which I say, “So what?”
Kärrholm’s Spectator article is entitled “Did demographics decide the Swedish election?”, a headline which implies that particular demographic groups having a decisive influence on elections is somehow new or unusual.
Did demographics decide the Swedish election in 2022, when, as The Local found out, foreign-born voters with non-European backgrounds voted more to the right than in the 2026 election?
Maybe!
Did demographics change the face of Swedish politics over the last 12 years as rural working-class men threw their support in force behind the Sweden Democrats?
Yes!
That is democracy. Particular demographic groups regularly sway elections. Coming from Canada, where well-established immigrant communities from around the globe “decide” elections – i.e. participate in them as citizens, like everyone else, who is probably also an immigrant, a few generations back – and are wooed by various political parties accordingly, the “news” that immigrant Swedish voters were not particularly interested in voting for parties which either espoused or supported xenophobic and anti-immigration rhetoric wasn’t very newsworthy.
So, at risk of explaining the deeply obvious:
Yes, citizens with immigrant backgrounds get to vote, and yes, like everyone else, they are likely to vote for parties that promise to make their life better – or at least not make it worse.
Is it any surprise that voters of immigrant background would not want to vote for government coalition parties which have introduced strict new citizenship requirements with no transition period, overseen the threatened and actual deportation of their teenaged children, and increased the required salary for a work permit well beyond the reach of ordinary workers?
Is the next bit of voter demographic news going to be that moneyed families in wealthy Stockholm enclaves voted for the Moderates? That environmental activists voted for the Green Party? Or that ethno-nationalists voted for the Sweden Democrats?
The pearl-clutching in certain corners of Swedish politics on whether “immigrant voters” “influenced” this election is telling, but not about immigrants to Sweden, or their voting habits.
It reveals something worryingly anti-democratic. The message of this particular batch of pearl-clutching – a message which is more or less explicit, depending on who is delivering it – is that those voters they consider to be “foreign” should not have the same kind of say, the same rights, in how the country is governed as “native” Swedes.
In other words, ethno-nationalism trumps democracy. It’s for this reason that far-right ethno-nationalist parties are typically deemed fundamentally undemocratic, whatever words they may choose for their name.
The democratically-minded response to demographic voting data that shows voters with immigrant backgrounds overwhelmingly supporting your political opposition is to look at the platforms and election strategies of the parties which did so well with those voters.
Did those parties promise immigration reforms that would make the lives of those voters less difficult – by, say, making it easier for them to keep their families together? Or by lowering the work permit salary threshold that affects their friends and families? Did those parties, perhaps, field more candidates from backgrounds similar to the voters?
If the Social Democrats and the Left Party effectively mobilised voters from particular voter demographic groups, maybe it's time to look at why your own party failed to do so – not to insinuate (or, in some cases, flat-out say) that those voters are somehow less legitimate than other voters.
This is not rocket science, it’s not news, and it’s definitely not unusual or extraordinary. It’s basic political strategising in a democratic society. If someone has a problem with that type of political strategising or voter behaviour with only one segment of the electorate, it is a clear sign that what they don’t like is that segment of the electorate – and that they dislike that segment enough to problematise what is otherwise a fundamental aspect of democratic politics.
As commentators on democratic systems of government have said from time immemorial, democracy is far from an ideal system – it is messy, it exposes all kinds of divisions and self-interests in a society, and what ‘the people’ want is not always what is, in retrospect, best for society as a whole – but it is, so far, the best system we’ve come up with in our general human struggle to escape authoritarianism.
In the interests of that common struggle, what we as members of a democratic society (including members currently without the right to vote, like yours truly) need to guard against is not citizens exercising their right to vote – but political forces that, when they lose, blame a normal, and necessary, part of the democratic system instead of looking for democratic solutions.
If you’re on the political right in Sweden and you think the policies and ideologies of the Left Party or the Social Democrats are bad for the country, and are therefore worried about a particular voter group swaying hard to the left, your plan of action is straightforward: start working to appeal to that voter group.
If you don’t really know how to appeal to that voter group, start looking at your party’s policies and promises and asking how they affect, or are likely to affect that group. If you don’t know enough about their lives or their priorities or their struggles to properly answer those questions, go into their communities and talk to them.
“Immigrant voters” are not somehow innately left-wing. To return to the example of Canada, where major parties of all stripes actively court a wide variety of Canadian immigrant voters, there are plenty of people from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds who vote – and are candidates – for all the major political parties.
Once one stops assuming that ethnicity, religion, or place of birth pre-determines political ideology, or that people from a different ethnic background becoming part of your society is inherently threatening, it turns out that the vast majority of people are just people, and if you find a way to cater to their economic and family interests, they’ll probably vote for you.
If it sounds like I am explaining the painfully obvious, it’s because I am. But here we are.
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