Talk:Swedish general election, 2006

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Contents

[edit] Minor parties

To avoid speculation on who has a resonable chance or not to gain seats amongst the minor parties, perhaps its best to include all parties except for the obviously frivolous ones. --Soman 08:35, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Or just go by the general opinion and the poll results. Itake 10:36, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

There, a fair compromise in my opinion. However, someone should include poll statistics from other institutes besides Temo. Such as Demoskop, Sifo etc. Itake 11:08, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the good idea of splitting contender parties into major and minor - it makes it easier for readers to pick out significant contenders from the "dross". I also agree that we need more poll statistics from other sources - especially Sifo (if I remember rightly they have the largest sample size of any Swedish polster). Unfortunately I'm not yet experienced enough to make a table of results very easily so help would be appreciated (although I can always try copying the current table and changing what needs to be changed...). Tamino 13:06, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
I would be happy to put the numbers in if you can link me to their results, we should be including all polls, but the Temo ones are the only ones I've been able to find online - Jord 14:27, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
No worries, I did that already. It now represents the three major sources, Sifo, Demoskop and Temo. Itake 14:37, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Election campaign section

The reason I began the election campaign section was to give more background to the article (and make it more informative to those wishing to follow the election). Unfortunately I have only managed to write about unemployment, and not other issues such as education or care for the elderly. Please help by adding new subsections! Tamino 13:12, 28 March 2006 (UTC)


They are two communist party in Sweden. Not one only. The biggest is called The Communist Party (Kommuistiska Partiet) and the other is called Swedens Communist Party. So I´ll corrct it now. This comment was added by 85.226.111.48 (Talk) on 19:25, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Opinion polling

Does anyone know the sample sizes of the various pollsters? I read somewhere that different Swedish pollsters have large differences in sample size, so perhaps they should be mentioned beside the tables to inform the readers. Tamino 08:43, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Should be easy enough to find through the links at each of the polls represented in the article. Itake 21:23, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Skop do not seem to have the results of their polls on their website. Nor is there any information on sample size. I have e-mailed them to ask where the results are and to ask about their sample size. I have heard Skop polls mentioned in the Swedish media but I have never seen a table of their results except here on this article. Does anyone know if there might be for example a newspaper article with their results that we can link to? I am a bit uneasy about quoting polling data without a reference. I have to say that I find it rather odd that the data is not available. In Britain the British Polling Council requires its members to release the full dataset (let alone the headline figures!) within "two working days of the original release".

In comparison, it was easy to find the data of all the other pollsters, so I have added it to the article. Tamino 08:28, 8 April 2006 (UTC)


I have received the following from SKOP:

"SKOP:s väljarbarometrar publiceras enbart i våra prenumererade nyhetsbrev och genom pressreleaser till nyhetsbyråerna och större tidningar och TV-kanaler. Det är sedan upp till mottagarna av pressmeddelandena om de vill publicera eller ej. Antalet genomförda intervjuer ligger alltid mellan 1.100 och 1.200."

In English:

"SKOP's election poll is only published in our subscribed newsletter and through press releases to new bureaus and the larger newspapers and TV channels. It is then up to the recipients of the press releases to decide whether to publish or not. The number of interviews done is always between 1100 and 1200."

I have now added the sample size into the Skop section. Can anyone find a newspaper article or story from for example TT with the poll results? It would be good to have a citation. Tamino 09:15, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I recently added a link to Temo's listing of all opinion polls, by all pollsters, since 2000, under External links. Though not a primary source, it can definitely be considered comparatively reliable - and should serve as a decent substitute for those pollsters who, like SKOP, do not publish their own results. -- jla 19:38, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pirate Party - Major or Minor?

As it stands, PP has more members than the Greens. If this is indicative, then PP are a major contender. However, they are a new party and have yet to prove themselves to be any type of contender, major or minor. But on the other hand, PP have caused policy shift amongst the parties in the Riksdag. So, a discussion, Pirate Party: Major or Minor?


If FI is a "major contender" so is the Pirate Party. Either move FI from major to minor or bump PP to major. Medeltid 16:57, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

FI atleast gets around 0.5 of the votes in the polls. The PP gets so few they aren't even noticeable in the polls Itake 05:43, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Are PP listed on the Polls?
The Pirate Party are part of the "Other" category, as are all the parties not already in the Riksdag; none of them have registered sufficiently high support (I seem to remember you need at least 3% in two consequtive polls or something like that) to be treated seperately. Tamino 19:50, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

IMO FI had a lot of media attention when they formed in 2005, and their founding conference was an event every newspaper and tv channel had their eyes on, but they rapidly seemed to be hit by dissension and a general conflict etween propostitons that stemmmed from hard-line gender theory (for example a suggestion to rewrite family law to enable multi-person civil unions - that is, group marriages of some kind - and another to abolish any distinctions between boys' and girls' names, so that a girl could be called Matthew and a boy Louise or Ruth, to "help break up male domination" - between that kind of issue and things that would affect more clearly and sensibly the bad lot of women; the latter is something they seemed not to address. Not to mention that demnds of this kind might have a better journey if they have a chance of getting discussed by other parties... Indeed they didn't come up with a clear party program, I don't know if the have one yet. At present they're a tiny sect.

They've had almost zero visibility in the election campaign. I'm not an irate anti-feminist, I really feel we could use a party of this kind, but FI seemed to drown in theory and too much media smartness. The chance they'll enter the riksdag now is about 1/2%.

And the Pirate Party? I suspect they'll be overtaken by any one of the established parties. The questions of downloading and copyright are making a real splash in Sweden, but I don't see the Pirate Party winning more than a few voters who are disinterested in other questions. Strausszek Sweden, September 13, 15:35 (CEST)

[edit] Describing coalitions

Upon first reading of the article from the top, it was not clear which party was represented by kd, mp, v etc. I suggest putting the actual party in instead, along with the abbreviation, so that confusion is limited. (It is not immediately apparent, for instance, that mp would be the abbreviation for the Green Party.) [Now I have an account, a signature Blackjack4124 12:02, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Concur. Centre-right parties (m, c, fp, kd) & Red-green parties (s, v, mp) is very confusing. Could add abbreviations beside individual parties in lines above. -- SGBailey 14:12, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] piratpartiet in election?

I can't seem to find anything on how the piratpartiet did in the elections, or if they even participated at all for that matter. Not in this article and not on the net. --MarSch 09:02, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Piratpartiet is on "Others" at 5.7% and will not get counted untill wednesday.
To elabourate on that answer the votes aren't counted for any party yet. They have gone through most (all?) of the votes and now have a preliminary vote count for all the parties already in the parliament and the rest of the parties together as "others". The final results from the election should be announced on Wedensday.Jeltz talk 15:42, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
They are doing the final count right now. At this moment (acording to my own calulations) Piratpartiet will get 0.66%. http://www.val.se/val/val2006/slutlig/R/rike/roster.html
They should not have been removed. At the time they are ahead of three of the other "major contenders". Put them back on that list.
Arr, they be deservin' that at least... no, in reality, they don't. Would suggest final separation of party types as thus - major powers in parliament, minor parties in parliament, unelected parties with significant vote, and marginal parties. The first two would appear to be easy (ie. the parties that usually generate national leaders, and those that don't) but the third one presents a problem - when does a vote become significant? (And should it be national or local?) At any rate, a vote of under 0.5% isn't notable... a vote between that and 1% is marginal, though probably worth noting in passing, and anything above that is a 'contender, or significantly voted for party'. Feel free to use Swedish electoral conventions if they are available to avoid use of 'original research'. Blackjack4124 12:04, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
0.63%. The editors of Template:British political parties have long had a consensus that only parties which gain at least 10,000 votes at a GE should be classified as "minor parties" on that template (only 4 parties qualify). I propose that we adopt the same rule at Template:Swedish political parties: only parties with 10,000 votes get a mention on that template. Those would be sd, Piratpartiet, spi and Sjukvårdspartiet. (fi and jl already get a mention higher up cos of their MEPs.) What do others think? --Mais oui! 13:17, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please Add "Electoral Geography" to the Links Section

Electoral Geography

[edit] County councils

I note that we have Swedish county council elections, 2002. Is there going to be a Swedish county council elections, 2006 article? --Mais oui! 07:54, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Of course. But perhaps we should wait until final results are out. --Soman 09:27, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] elected MPs

see Members of the Swedish Parliament 2006-2010. --Soman 15:26, 22 September 2006 (UTC)


[edit] "Districts"

I changed "electoral districts" into "constituencies", as that is what they are called on official Swedish webpages. See http://www.riksdagen.se/templates/R_Page____1065.aspx

There are electoral districts in the Riksdag elections ("valdistrikt"), but they are smaller units, where each contains one polling station: http://www.val.se/in_english/general_information/electoral_districts/index.html

I am working on a page on Swedish constituencies, but it isn't quite finished yet. In fact, I feel uncertain about a number of things, but I suppose other people can help with that, if anyone is interested. Life on Mars? 16:48, 23 September 2006 (UTC)


Since Sweden does not have one-seat districts in any elections ("the winner takes it all" as in the UK) the vote districts (valdistrikt) and the voting regions [valkretsar) have to be differentiated. The latter are much larger, often coextensive with a county and including several cities, and will seat several MPs, often a dozen or more). Of vote districts there are many in every city or municipality, and more than 6000 in the entire country, so there's no point in making a list of vote districts.

There are also 39 "levelling seats" (utjämningsmandat) in the Riksdag, used to level out inequities which might happen after every voting region has finished its partition of seats and mandates. Under the new constitution of 1974 there were 350 seats, but after the first new elction (1973) landed in 175 seats each for the two major political blocks, one seat was deleted to avoid this outcome again (the Socialist side narrowly won 1973 in terms of numbers, though I don't think numbers was the legally decisive thing, it was simnply clear that the procedure stated in the new constitution gave no option to oust the Social Democrats, who would have the steady support of the Communist party although not necessarily of all the Communist party voters. on 25 occasions in 1973-76, votings had to be finished by a draw. Strausszek October 1, 2006 22:12 (CEST)

[edit] Permanent/Adjustment Seats

Soes anybody know when those figures will be published? --The monkeyhate 18:14, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

They already are, see [1]. (By the way, I don't like the term "permanent seat", as it seems to imply permanency over time, but that's another matter. As long as the Election Authority officially uses it, we're stuck with it.) -- Jao 19:53, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template for election results

I made this nifty template: Template:Sweden general election, 2006

It includes all parties with over 100 votes. I merged the different spellings for Donald Duck Party. Data was collected from [2] and [3]

Some things I am not so sure about:

  • Could not find previous year data for NSF, even though I am sure they have existed for more than 4 years. Didn't they run last time?
  • Is The Communists (Kommunisterna) on val.se the same as The Communist Party?
  • Is Women Power a good translation for Kvinnokraft? It sounds a bit unnatural to me.

--Truncated 16:57, 2 October 2006 (UTC)


  • Yes, Kommunisterna is the same as the Communist Party, though the party in question has never been the dominant communist/leftist party in Sweden. Founded in '69 I think, it used to be known as Kpml(r) Kommunistiska partiet marxist-leninisterna (revolutionärerna) - the translation should be self-evident. It was and is very extreme-left: about two years ago it shortened to Kommunistiska partiet, KP. Their influence on national politics has always been zero.

"Women Power" - well, Women To The Power could be better. Strausszek October 10, 2006

I included my template briefly... but then I saw that all pages had been updated to use the format on this page, even the template I based it on. I think this format is ugly... and we could probably exclude a lot of parties with less than 100 or even 200 votes. -- Truncated 14:31, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Map

I've reinstated the map. The concerns raised at Image:Swedish parliamentary election, 2006, map-counties.svg are all debunked by adding up the numbers at [4]. Possibly the remover confused it with the regional (Landsting) or local (Kommun) election results, which certainly not always coincide the Riksdag election results. I've changed "parliamentary" to "Riksdag" in the image caption to clearer reflect what it is showing. -- Jao 22:05, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd be happy to repeat myself. There was not a "red" majority in Östergötland, S, V and MP only received 47,7 % of the votes to the Riksdag. There was no "blue" majority in Gotland, M, Fp, C and Kd only received 49 % of the votes. The same goes for City of Gothenburg. Thuresson 15:44, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
If your point is that it could be stated more clearly that the map shows relative majorities (counting only votes on parties that gained representation) rather than absolute majorities (counting all valid votes), then I whole-heartedly agree. Go ahead and state that more clearly. -- Jao 17:40, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
If we're speaking relative majorities, the social democrats got a majority of the votes in all but 4 of the 29 voting districts. Thuresson 03:19, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but we're not talking about single parties here, but government-contender blocks. The map shows which of the two blocks got more votes than the other one. I don't know what's the best way to state this, but it's an interesting piece of information (which the largest-party information would not be). -- Jao 11:56, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Liberal Party Hacking and the Watergate Scandal

Did anyone else see a parallel here? MilquetoastCJW 16:05, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Others"?

The results lists the "Viking party" as the lowest ranking party, with 1 vote. However, it also says "Others", with 1,365. Why is "Viking party" included in the list but not those that compose the "Others"? 83.233.1.111 02:57, 11 February 2007 (UTC)