https://www.bloombergquint.com/politics ... oric-slumpQuote:
An Icon Of Scandinavian Social Democracy Eyes A Historic Slump
Amanda Billner
Rafaela Lindeberg
6 July 2018, 8:47 AM
5 July 2018, 11:00 PM
(Bloomberg) -- The party that has embodied Scandinavian social democracy for decades risks a historic beating.
With just nine weeks of political campaigning left, latest polls estimate the level of support for Sweden’s Social Democrats at about 25 percent. If confirmed in the Sept. 9 general election, it would be the party’s worst result on record.
Like its sister parties across Europe, the group has been wrong-footed by rising opposition to immigration across the continent. Under its leadership, Sweden has seen an influx of about 400,000 immigrants since the Syrian refugee crisis of 2015 -- a massive number for a country of 10 million people. Migration has dominated the campaign, which has seen the nationalist Sweden Democrats shoot up in the polls. The government has since tacked toward a more restrictive migration policy, but voters remain unconvinced.
“The agenda in Sweden has been very much about migration, and crime and punishment," said one of the party’s leading figures, Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson. "These are issues where we don’t enjoy as high a level confidence from voters as on other issues,” she said during the country’s annual political festival in Almedalen, on the island of Gotland in the Baltic.
The Social Democrats were the dominant force in Sweden for almost seven decades and at one point enjoyed as much as 54 percent of the national vote. But that support has been shrinking since the start of the millennium, and had dropped to around 31 percent by the time the last election was held.
Article, with multiple charts, continued at above link