Migrant-crisis hit Sweden remains without a working government since the September election left the formerly ruling Social Democrats unable to form a coalition, and a growing number of voters are now calling for their own parties to consider working with the populist Sweden Democrats to save the country from a snap general election.
Moderate and centre-right voters in Sweden increasingly see working with the Sweden Democrats as a workable means to give Sweden a government, and to influence how the country is run in the future.
In a newly released poll, voters of both the Moderates and the Christian Democrats agree that the party should look toward some kind of talks with the populists.
According to the poll, conducted by Novus for Swedish broadcaster SVT, 85 per cent of Moderate voters and 83 per cent of Christian Democrat voters held a favourable view of working with the SD.
Political scientist Jenny Madestam commented on the results saying, “If you ask the voter on the street, they think it is [an obvious solution] to sit in a government or hold talks with the Swedish Democrats. But this does not appear among the party leadership because they have so many different considerations to take.”
The call to negotiate with the SD was also been favoured by a majority of Moderate politicians in a similar poll that was conducted shortly after the election in September.
“We Moderates want the party in the Riksdag to actively pursue moderate policies and counteract socialism. If this is only possible with SD, it is worth negotiating with Åkesson,” one member said at the time.
A Sweden Democrat spokesman remarked that party leader Jimmie Åkesson had already invited the leaders of both parties to join him in talks about setting up a government months ago, and the invitation remained open.
All political parties formally ruled out working with the Sweden Democrats before the vote, who have grown in popularity and enjoyed electoral success since the migrant crisis saw the country receive more arrivals per capita than any other European Union nation.
The number of Swedes who wanted to see fewer asylum seekers coming to their country doubled in the period of 2015-18 — analogous to the migrant crisis itself — demonstrating the dramatic shift in feeling caused, it is claimed, by the strongly pro-migration policies of Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. In August, Breitbart London reported that 73 per cent of people in Sweden said they felt their country was going in the wrong direction.