Sweden’s general election: winners, losers, and what happens next

The Swedish general election held on 11 September produced a small majority for the opposition right bloc. Jonathan Polk assesses what the results mean for Swedish politics

The Swedish European elections will be held in the shadow of September’s national election, but European issues will play a key role

Sweden will not only hold European elections in May, but will also hold national, regional and municipal elections in September. Linda Berg and Jonathan Polk write on the effect this ‘super-election’ year will have on the vote for the European Parliament. They note that while the two largest parties, the Social Democrats and Moderates, will likely have one eye on the national elections, European issues will nevertheless play a substantial role in the campaign

Party Responsiveness to Public Opinion in Young Democracies

Are political parties in young democracies responsive to the policy preferences of the public? Compared to extensive scholarship on party responsiveness in established democracies, research on party responsiveness in young democracies is limited. We argue that weaker programmatic party–voter linkages in post-communist democracies create incentives for parties to respond to their supporters rather than the more general electorate. Such responsiveness occurs in two ways. First, parties follow shifts in the mean position of their supporters. Second, drawing on the research on party–voter congruence, we argue that parties adjust their policy positions to eliminate previous incongruence between themselves and their supporters. Analyses based on a comprehensive dataset that uses expert surveys, parties’ manifestoes and election surveys to measure parties’ positions, and several cross-national and national surveys to measure voters’ preferences provide strong support for this argument.publishedVersio

Congruence and party responsiveness in Western Europe in the 21st century

Research on party responsiveness in established democracies suggests that parties follow shifts in the preferences of either the general electorate or party supporters. Drawing on theoretical models of party competition and research on party-voter congruence, we argue in this article that in the 21st century Western European mainstream parties respond to their partisan constituents. Parties adjust their policy positions to eliminate previous incongruence between themselves and their constituents and follow the shifts in supporters' positions. Analyses based on a series of datasets that use expert surveys and election surveys to measure parties' positions and several cross-national and national surveys to measure voters' preferences between 1999 and 2014 strongly support the argument that mainstream parties respond to existing incongruence. The findings in this article update many of the empirical results of prior studies on party responsiveness to public opinion shifts, with important ramifications for our understanding of party-based representation in contemporary European democracies.publishedVersio

How internal disagreements affect the success of political parties: evidence from Sweden

While political parties generally try and present a united front to the electorate, there can often be a significant gap between the policies supported by a party’s membership and the party leadership. Based on survey evidence in Sweden, Ann-Kristin Kölln and Jonathan Polk assess how these differences can affect the ability of parties to fight elections and how researchers can better understand the nature of intraparty conflict

Swedish general election: a final look at the polls and the party platforms

Sweden will hold a general election on 14 September. Ahead of the vote Jonathan Polk and Henrik Ekengren Oscarsson provide an overview of the polling and the platforms for each of the mainstream parties. They note that while the ‘Red-Green’ opposition parties have been leading the polls, there is some momentum for the governing ‘Alliance’ coalition and it still remains unclear what government will emerge from the election

Mapping Europe’s party systems: which parties are the most right-wing and left-wing in Europe?

Within individual countries there is usually a good understanding of how parties differ from one another on economic issues, but how do parties in different European countries compare? Would Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats lie to the right of Mariano Rajoy’s People’s Party in Spain? Is the British Labour Party to the left of other centre-left parties in Europe? Based on data from expert surveys, Ryan Bakker, Seth Jolly and Jonathan Polk map the left/right positions of political parties from 14 eastern and western European countries. They write that while this comparison gives a good indication of party competition across Europe, future research will also allow for European parties to be compared on non-economic dimensions and with parties in other parts of the world such as North America

Analyzing the cross-national comparability of Party Positions on the Socio-Cultural and EU Dimensions in Europe

Using survey vignettes and scaling techniques, we estimate common socio-cultural and European integration dimensions for political parties across the member states of the European Union. Previous research shows that economic left/right travels well across the EU, meaning that the placements of parties on that dimension are cross- nationally comparable; however, the social dimension is more complex, with different issues forming the core of the social dimension in different countries. The 2014 wave of the Chapel Hill Expert Survey includes anchoring vignettes which we use as \bridge votes" to place parties from different countries on a common social liberal/authoritarian dimension and a separate common scale for European integration. We estimate the dimensions using the Bayesian Aldrich-McKelvey technique. The resulting scales offer cross-nationally comparable interval-level measures of a party's social and EU ideological positions