Immigrants’ support for the left in Sweden may have decided the Riksdag election, writes Fredrik Kärrholm, who represents the Moderate Party (Moderaterna) in the Riksdag, in an opinion piece in The Spectator on Tuesday.
Although the election result is not yet official, and Kärrholm cautions that the red-greens will not necessarily manage to form a government, he concludes that immigration is in any event reshaping Swedish politics.
In the 2022 election, around 15 per cent of those eligible to vote were born abroad. This year, the figure is estimated to be around 18 per cent. Voter turnout also increased in several districts with large immigrant populations, while it fell slightly in the country as a whole. In an election decided by only a few tens of thousands of votes, that matters.
Immigration from culturally foreign countries strengthens the left, he concludes:
Sweden’s public service broadcaster conducted a large election survey. It showed a clear lead for the left among voters of non-European background: seven out of ten supported one of the opposition parties.
A poll conducted by the respected Novus institute before the election showed that among Muslim respondents, around 80 per cent intended to vote for either the Social Democrats (Socialdemokraterna) or the Left Party (Vänsterpartiet).
In some electoral districts with large immigrant populations, the results are striking. In Rosengård Centrum in Malmö, for example, according to the preliminary count, the Social Democrats and the Left Party together received 95.2 per cent of the vote – a result that might have made Saddam Hussein envious.
It was foolish of the Tidö government to grant 200,000 new citizenships, Kärrholm believes:
The government made a mistake when it allowed citizenship applications to continue under the old rules while the new and much stricter citizenship law was being drafted. At the time, I argued for a moratorium on citizenship while the new rules were being introduced.
During the previous parliamentary term, around 200,000 people were granted citizenship under rules that imposed very few requirements on applicants – not even a requirement to be able to speak or write Swedish. The majority of those granted citizenship came from countries outside Europe. The final result has not yet been confirmed, but with only around 30,000 votes separating the two sides, such demographic changes can clearly matter.
Fredrik Kärrholm is a former police officer and writer, and is no stranger to controversy. He has criticised the Swedish police authorities for the use of quotas in police recruitment, and has called the Palestinian former Social Democratic member of the Riksdag Jamal El-Haj a security risk because of his links to Hamas.
