Many voters wait in front of a polling station to vote in Nacka, a municipality in Stockholm. /
The left-wing bloc narrowly exceeds the right-wing bloc in the polls and the rise of ultra-conservatism is worrying
Seven and a half million people were called to the polls this Sunday to elect the head of government in general elections marked by increased crime. Until the last day of the campaign, the polls showed a very close race between the left-wing bloc (according to the latest polls, it would achieve 49.8% of the vote), with the Social Democratic Party (PS) in the lead – in front of the Executive during the last 28 years–, and from the right (49.2%). After the closure of the schools, according to the exit polls, the PS prevails with 29.3% of the support. Behind is the far-right Swedish Democrats with 20.5% and the right-wing Moderate Party with 18.8%.
In other words, the ideological bias of the future cabinet would depend on the coalitions. The Social Democrats should lean on the most minority groups, such as the Center Party (7.7% representation, according to the polls), the Left Party (7%) or the Green Party (5.8%).
What most marked the day was the chaos. From wrong ballots to long queues of an hour and a half, passing through delays in schools, such as the one that took place in Lindholmen, in Gothenburg. The facilities could not be opened on time due to a mix-up with the electoral material, which was locked in a room and the workers did not have access to it, explained Frida Nowotny, head of elections in Gothenburg, to the newspaper ‘Aftonbladet’. Finally, the center was able to open at approximately 9:00, an hour later than scheduled.
But the mess did not end there. In several polling stations, visually impaired people reported errors on their ballots. The National Confederation of Visual Impairments stated that the Electoral Authority put the wrong tickets in the envelopes marked in braille, causing members of the collective to vote for a different party than the one they had planned. The real number of those affected is unknown, but at half a day, four citizens discovered the mess and reported the facts. For this reason, the association advised them to vote again.
“It’s incredibly annoying, first there was a problem with the Braille election material being sent and now we’ve discovered there’s an error in the material. This clearly shows that visually impaired voters still do not have the same opportunities to participate on the same terms in Swedish democracy”, criticized Niklas Mattsson, president of the entity.
Fainting from the heat
A 2019 Scandinavian law mandates that ballots be protected in booths to promote secrecy when choosing a candidate. The shortage of these booths slowed down the pace and led to long queues of up to an hour and a half in some locations, such as in Tygelsjö (outside Malmö), Skuru School (Nacka) or Uppsala, to mention a few examples. According to ‘SVT’, two people fainted due to the heat waiting to vote in Sandarne, in the municipality of Söderhamn. “There are queues throughout Sweden,” they stressed from the Electoral Authority, which still reassured the voters after assuring that if the queues persist at 8:00, when the schools close, they will also be allowed to deposit their ballots in the polls, so who expect the vote count to be delayed more than normal, the entity’s chief of staff, Anna Nyqvist, told the ‘Expressen’ newspaper.
This concludes the election day in which the outgoing prime minister, Magdalena Andersson (Social Democratic Party), the leader of the extreme right Jimmie Åkesson (Swedish Democrats) and the leader of the conservative opposition Ulf Kristersson (Moderate Party) are playing for the position in the Government after a campaign focused on the increase in violence in the streets. Insecurity has marked a campaign where analysts fear that there will be an escalation of the extreme right embodied in the Swedish Democrats.
Given the wave of crime, from the Swedish Police Association they point out to the newspaper ‘Samnytt’ that the body “has lost control, the only thing we do is put out fires temporarily.” Under current laws, they add, “criminals don’t even expect to be caught because it’s almost impossible to get a conviction without a plaintiff.” For this reason, they fear that, if it continues like this, “without criminal consequences or sanctions, we will have worse violent crimes.”