The anti-establishment ideology known as populism is becoming increasingly prevalent within global legislatures and executives since the turn of the 21st Century, particularly in Europe. Whilst Norway and Denmark have historically seen success for the populist far-right, Sweden has been noted to be an outlier to the populist trend, as the populist right-wing party the Sweden Democrats have slowly increased their seat share in the Swedish Riksdag since their creation in the late 1980s. The COVID-19 pandemic only accelerated populism’s growth globally, and post-COVID elections across the world saw massive shocks as historically-dominant parties were replaced with newer parties due to society’s displeasure with how their government handled the pandemic.
This study sought to analyse to what extent nationalism affects Swedish voting tendencies in the 2018 and 2022 elections, and the reasons why people may vote for the Sweden Democrats Party, alongside analysing whether Swedish voting tendencies changed in 2022, the first post- COVID election. This was achieved through quantitative tests using data that was gathered by several data repositories of the Swedish Government. It was found that Sweden once again did not follow the global pattern, and that the Sweden Democrats’ seat growth continued on its predicted trajectory, which was most likely due to Sweden’s obtuse COVID policy in which they sought to mitigate the pandemic’s damage, rather than to completely prevent it. Furthermore, it was found that wages played the largest role in why the Sweden Democrats were successful, and that the financial markets play a huge role in Swedish society’s daily lives, which is most likely due to Sweden’s historical collective agreement, which created a distinct wage system between high and low-skilled workers. It is recommended that future studies further explore how and why the Sweden Democrats were successful in each region, and do so by using more in-depth primary and secondary data to create more distinct methodological tests than what was used in this study.
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