At midnight on on Sunday, the election results were still not clear. However, one thing was clear. The Social Democrats have lost heavily in many immigrant-dense suburbs. For example, in the constituency of Angered’s centre, “other parties” get eight percent. In the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby, “other parties” get up to 23 percent (!) of the votes in some constituencies. The trend is similar in many similar areas. At midnight, SVT reported that Nyans may have entered Malmö’s municipal council.
At the same time, the Social Democrats are retreating strongly in several of these constituencies. What happened?
It is hardly parties such as Alternativ för Sverige, Medborgerlig Samling, Feministiskt initiative or the Climate Alliance that have made progress in these areas, where S not infrequently had its own majority. With almost one hundred percent probability, it is the party Nyans that accounts for almost all the votes in the category “other parties”. People in these areas who previously voted for the Social Democrats have abandoned the party to vote for Nyans instead, led by party leader Mikail Yüksel from Gothenburg.
It’s a party that has received a lot of attention in recent months, not least when it got involved in the campaign against the Swedish social service. Misinformation is being spread on social media that social services are taking Muslim children into care on false grounds, lies that Nyans has used to scare people and attract voters. Another event that has drawn Nyan’s attention is the Koran burnings of the Danish-Swedish right-wing extremist Rasmus Paludan. The Nyans party wants to ban such demonstrations with the argument that it would be incitement against ethnic groups.
These two events, in combination with the Social Democrats’ statements that the share of non-Nordic immigrants should not exceed a certain percentage and that we should not have any “Somali-towns” in Sweden, may have caused many people in the exclusion areas who previously voted S to choose Nyans instead.
That a small party in such a short time manages to attract almost every fourth voter in certain areas is no less than a shock. For the Social Democrats, it is a nightmare.
S is a party that largely relies on the loyalty of voter groups. In the past, the big base has been the Swedish working class. It has largely abandoned the party in favor of the Sweden Democrats. Voters with a foreign background who live in socially and economically vulnerable suburbs have been another voter group that the Social Democrats have more or less been able to count on.
Sunday’s election will in all probability show that it is no longer so. Voters in densely populated areas are not “voting cattle for the Social Democrats”, as right-wing extremists sometimes call these groups. Sunday’s preliminary election results show that it is possible to challenge the Social Democrats even among these voters.
In this election, the Social Democrats are mainly supported by the middle class in the big cities. If the trend continues, S will thus become a party for urban civil servants with an academic education.
In the long term, it is not good news for S. That group is a very mobile group of voters. Suddenly S can be completely without a loyal base. SD’s, and then Nyan’s, advance may be what eventually transforms S into a 20 percent party.
Karin Pihl is lead writer at GP. Her lyrics are often about defending petty-bourgeois life and its values, big and small.
