Hej to all on the Scandinavia Politics mailing list,
I have two notices about elections in this part of the world.
1. First, the Norwegian election of a year ago. The first report from the
Norwegian Election Studies group - Bernt Aaardal and Stavn Guro, "Enda
flere skifter parti" (www.ssb.no/samfunnsspeilet) - has now been published
by Statistics Norway. As the title suggests, it's in Norwegian. But one of
the authors, Bernt Aaardal, has also written a preliminary report in
English, "How to Lose a Walk-Over Election"
(www.samfunnsforskning.no/page/Publikasjoner/Publikasjoner_Rapporter/7457/29622.html),
based on exit polls and official statistics. (Thanks to Elin Haugsgjerd
Allern of the Institute for Social Research in Oslo for this tip.)
2. Meanwhile, with less than a fortnight to go before polling day, the
already exciting Swedish election campaign is becoming even more so. On
Sunday evening, in a scandal that one political scientist compared to
Watergate (which was perhaps just a slight exaggeration), it was revealed
that senior figures in the Liberal campaign had repeatedly gained access
to the Social Democrats' intranet, which contains sensitive information
about the Social Democrats' election strategy and tactics. The police have
raided the Liberals' central office, and prosecutions are likely. The
Liberal leader has deplored the intrusion, and the trespassers so far
revealed have all been from Liberal Youth. But it seems unlikely that they
kept their information entirely to themselves, and some Social Democrats'
have complained that Liberal campaign initiatives have been uncannily
well-timed to pre-empt those of the ruling party.
This scandal may just fizzle out, or it may help the Social Democrats to
recover in a campaign that has hitherto gone rather badly for them. After
pulling back the lead enjoyed by the four-party, centre-right "Alliance
for Sweden", the Social Democrats and their allies have - according to
most, but not all, opinion polls - slipped back again since the Alliance
agreed, some weeks ago, to abolish the current system of property tax.
(That agreement subsequently unravelled somewhat, but the lead in the
polls remained.)
The real possibility of a rare election defeat for the Social Democrats
might seem odd in the context of the vigorous growth of the Swedish
economy. But this growth has, at least until recently, been pretty much of
the jobless variety, and the Alliance has succeeded in placing
unemployment - which, when people on public retraining schemes are
counted, is about 9 per cent, and considerably higher among the young - at
the centre of the campaign. Indeed, some of the more outspoken Social
Democrats have criticised the response of the party leadership to the
Alliance's emphasis on unemployment, which has basically been to deny that
it's much of a problem.
Best,
Nick Aylott.
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