Thursday, September 23, 2010

Election Results

Daniel goes on and on about it, so I might as well write a few lines about the results of the Swedish general election.

In the national parliament, a centre-right four party government coalition stood against a centre-left-far-left-environmentalist three party coalition. The government won more than 49 % of the votes, but was two seats from keeping its majority in the 349 member parliament. The opposition coalition won less votes, and a populistic far-right party won seats for the first time. (You can have doubts about the far-right label, since many of the ideas of that party are rather leftish, Daniel says, but this is beside the point.) The government coalition stays in power, still with more seats than the left coalition, following a tradition of minority governments in Sweden.

In our home city, the result was rather similar, with the exception that the environmentalist party is on the same side as the centre-right parties. The centre-right-environmentalist coalition stays in power, having lost its majority in the city council but still with more seats than the left coalition, and then there are some seats that went to the far-right party. Daniel won a seat with his conservative party of the centre-right kind.

What is similar, both on the national level and on our local level, is that neither the centre-right nor the left coalition will cooperate with the new far-right party. This is the foundation for keeping the power, despite having a minority. Daniel is not very concerned about the state of the national parliament, but a bit more so on the city council. Still, if everyone takes care not to invite the far-right party into any cooperation, this should work out just fine. I just wish I could understand it a little better, human politics can be so complicated.

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