Voters deserted the Sweden Democrats in the European Championship election.
In some strong SD strongholds, the party lost every third voter.
The European Championship election was a cold shower for the Sweden Democrats – for the first time, the party is backing down in a national election.
In the country as a whole, the preliminary figures suggest that the party will land on 13.2 per cent, compared to 15.3 per cent in the previous European Championship election. In some municipalities, the decline is even more dramatic.
The municipality where the SD is backing down the most, by 8.5 percentage points to 16.6 per cent, is Gnosjö. In the Kulltorp district in the municipality, the decline is 14 percentage points, equivalent to approximately every third voter.
A possible explanation is the couch potatoes
Hampus Bergh, SD member of the municipal council in Gnosjö, says that he is "very disappointed" since the feeling before the election was good.
One explanation, according to him, is that SD's voters are couch potatoes in the European Championship election.
Now the party must sit down at the drawing board and analyse what went wrong, according to Hampus Bergh.
Backing down in Skåne
The party is also going down sharply in several strong SD strongholds in Skåne.
In Bjuv, the party is backing down by 6.8 percentage points and landing on 30.8 per cent, in Hörby the party is backing down by 4.8 percentage points and landing on 29.1 per cent.
The largest decline in Skåne is in Bromölla, where the SD is backing down by 7.9 percentage points to 27.9 per cent.
In the SD stronghold Almgården in Malmö – a district where the party received 46.1 per cent of the votes in the previous European Championship election – the party is plummeting by 14.6 percentage points, i.e. approximately one-third also there.
And in the Kronetorp-Burlöv district in Burlöv, the party is losing 16.3 percentage points, which is around half of their previous voters.
Of all 290 municipalities, the SD is only increasing preliminarily in nine. The largest increase is in Torsby, Tidaholm, and Aneby, with 0.4 percentage points in each municipality. Among the districts, the increase is largest in Lina östra in Södertälje, where the party is increasing by 7.5 percentage points according to the preliminary figures.
