The higher you go, the harder the fall. In Bromölla, the Sweden Democrats lost almost 8 percentage points from the 2019 EU election, down to 27.9 percent. Filip Persson, the party’s chairman in the municipality points to, among other things, that the turnout was low, and believes that the party also failed to get its EU-skeptic core voters to go and vote.
– I think it will be too complicated for many voters when we talked about wanting to stay in the EU, but have a referendum lock in the larger transfers of power. I probably think voters want a clearer message, either yes or no to the EU, says Filip Persson (SD).
The theory that SD had untapped voter potential has been confirmed by several opinion polls. Among other things, last week SD got 19.5 percent in SCB’s big party sympathy survey.
But the 13.2 percent in the EU election, which even made the party smaller than the Green Party, was far below the party’s expectations, where they rather asked themselves whether they should increase by one or two mandates in Brussels.
The decline was also visible in Bromölla’s neighboring municipality of Sölvesborg, Jimmie Åkesson’s hometown and another of the party’s strongest strongholds. Here the reduction was 2.7 percentage points, down to 25.9 percent.
Sour relationship with the Moderates
At the same time, the Moderates increased by almost as much here, 2.5 percentage points, albeit at a lower level, to 17.4 percent. The relationship between the parties is sore since the Moderates, after the 2022 election, left the last term’s collaboration with SD when the parties governed the municipality together. Now M instead governs in a coalition with the Social Democrats.
– It still feels good knowing that we have progressed in our municipality, and that those we see as our biggest opponents have backed down, says Kith Mårtensson (M), municipal councilor and group leader for M in Sölvesborg.
Mårtensson also hopes that the EU election results can cause ripples in the national waters and change the balance between the parties within the Tidö collaboration. There, she thinks that the Sweden Democrats have gained too much influence.
I don’t think the party is negatively affected
In all of Blekinge, SD lost 3.4 percentage points, down to 19 percent. But in the residence city of Karlskrona, at the other end of the long narrow but relatively short landscape, the SD’s district chairman thinks neither the party’s position nor self-image has been damaged.
– I think it is useful for us. If we are to be a large state-bearing party, we must also be able to accept electoral setbacks, or other kinds of setbacks. Everything is really about how we meet them, says Fredrik Thomasson (SD), chairman of the SD in Blekinge.
“Shocked – but not a catastrophic choice”
More in-depth questions about whether the loss can be explained by, for example, Kalla Fakta’s revelation of SD’s troll factory, Jimmie Åkesson’s response to the review or the party’s overall tone in the election campaign, the representatives interviewed here do not want to answer, but instead refer to the conclusions that are expected to come out later the newly added post-election analysis.
Despite the setbacks in both Blekinge and Skåne, SD’s results here in the party’s strongest strongholds were still better than the national results. On the way to the regional council meeting, Thomasson also stated that the 13.2 percent was still enough to keep the party’s three mandates in the European Parliament.
– If you look at the result, we were actually able to maintain and are at the same level as before. So I would say that it was shocking, but not a disaster election, says Fredrik Thomasson (SD).