Sweden is holding an election that is expected to boost a populist anti-immigration party which is vowing to crack down on gang violence that has shaken many people’s sense of security.
The Sweden Democrats won seats in parliament for the first time in 2010 and have steadily gained more votes in parliament with each election. The party’s fortunes have risen following massive migration in recent years, particularly in Europe’s crisis year of 2015, and as crime has grown in segregated neighbourhoods.
The populist party was founded by far-right extremists decades ago, but in recent years has worked hard to change its image. For many years, voters viewed it as unacceptable and other parties shunned it. That is now changing.
According to pre-election polls, the Sweden Democrats, who received 13% of the vote in 2018, will receive roughly 20% of the vote this time and move up to the position of second-largest party in the parliament. That would place it only below Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson's Social Democrats on the center-left.
Mr. Andersson has a high level of support. Less than a year ago, the 55-year-old became Sweden's first female prime minister, and she presided over Sweden's historic application to join Nato in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Her image has profited from her experience in government, first as finance minister, during crises like the Covid-19 outbreak, and then as prime minister, in the negotiations to join Nato, according to Zeth Isaksson, a sociologist at Stockholm University who specialises in electoral behaviour.
He told The Associated Press that "Magdalena Andersson is one of the most significant influencers in this race."
However, a large portion of voters are also fed up with her party, which has been in power for eight years, and blame it for high taxes as well as for failing to stop the shootings that have made Sweden one of Europe's most violent nations.
She has had eight years to accomplish all she is currently promising to do, according to Bosse Adolfsson, a 70-year-old partially retired electrician who attended a Sweden Democrats event on Saturday night. She is requesting an additional four years to do nothing.
There are two main groups, one on the left with four parties and the other on the right with four parties. Prior to the election, polls showed a close race between the blocs.
Even if Ms. Andersson's party receives the most votes, she might not be able to build a majority-holding government in parliament if the left-wing alliance performs poorly. In that situation, the opportunity to establish a government would pass to the party that finished second.
On the day of the election, Ms. Andersson campaigned in Rinkeby, a neighbourhood in Stockholm with a large immigrant population, addressing a crowd following a warm-up performance by a Swedish hip hop musician with Somali ancestry.
The Sweden Democrats, who Ms. Andersson described as a "far-right" group whose rhetoric and ideas could affect how welcome people could feel in society, are growing in popularity, she added.
In four years, Sweden "could be a different Sweden," she remarked.
Just a few yards from the nation's parliament building in the heart of Stockholm, the Sweden Democrats finished up their election campaign on Saturday with a boisterous rock concert event.
Along the city's waterfront, Jimmie Akesson, the party's 43-year-old leader who has worked to improve the party's image, spoke to his followers from a stage adorned with the daisy emblem.
Many Swedes believe they can no longer afford the country's once-generous immigrant policies, thus the party has clearly tapped into the social mood, and other parties have been coming closer to its stances. Some people are also persuaded to give left-wing authority another chance due to rising crime during its eight years in power.
Tobias Andersson, a 26-year-old Sweden Democratic lawmaker running for re-election, claimed that because his party supports opponents' goals, it is wrongly characterised as racist.
"I don't really care who formed my party; I wasn't even alive when it was founded. I consider the principles and practises that we uphold at the present time," he told the AP at the party gathering.
Other political groups, he claimed, who had accused the Sweden Democrats of racism are now "putting forward the same policies themselves."
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