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Social Democracy scholars! I have a finding that might interest you:
The decline of the Swedish Social Democratic Party in the national elections (grey line), does not have a corresponding decline in how much voters like the party (black line).
The decline of the Swedish Social Democratic Party in the national elections (grey line), does not have a corresponding decline in how much voters like the party (black line).
I have written about this in a book chapter that you can find here (in Swedish).
https://bit.ly/2BkgXSG
https://bit.ly/2BkgXSG
The chapter is a general overview of the similarities and differences between votes and sympathies for the Swedish parties from 1986-2019.
The chapter has a lot of different observations, but another central one is that while sympathies for SAP has been largely stable, sympathies for M (the largest center-right party) has gone from low to high. Mostly due to a decline of negative attitudes in the working class.
In addition, the Sweden Democrats have also become more sympathies (or at least less disliked) over time.
Thus, the decline of social democracy in Sweden is not so much a story of SAP becoming less popular, as a story of the right becoming more popular.
Thus, the decline of social democracy in Sweden is not so much a story of SAP becoming less popular, as a story of the right becoming more popular.
I think this is a fairly significant observation, as it goes against those narratives about the decline of Social Democracy that centers on concepts like 'betrayal of the working class'.
Now, the comparative data at http://cses.org have like/dislike items similar to the ones that I used.
It would be really nice if someone had a look there, to see if the Swedish pattern apply to other Social Democratic parties as well.
It would be really nice if someone had a look there, to see if the Swedish pattern apply to other Social Democratic parties as well.
There are some interesting points here about the generalizability of these findings. https://twitter.com/tabouchadi/status/1278274090860675075
Here are some further thoughts on the process behind this development. https://twitter.com/kajleers/status/1278287081454948353
As I mention in the chapter, it is debatable whether this is good news for the Swedish Social Democrats. On the one hand, the decline has not been as deep has it seems.
On the other hand, their problems seem to have less to do with themselves, and more to do with how their opponents are percieved. The latter seems more difficult to change.
