Warning: short story length text ahead.
The poll
might not be entirely correct, since it is self selecting rather than random. OTOH, they, along with another polling agency that is also considered not-very-scientific were the closest to the actual results in the latest election and the one before that. With this in mind...I'm pretty confident in these numbers.
Now, with that out of the way - it is in no way surprising. The Sweden Democrats have successfully branded themselves as "the only opposition party". Remember, we have 8 parties currently represented in Riksdagen. Last election, rather than allying themselves with the Sweden Democrats, the center-right
* Alliance for Sweden coalition (four parties, centrist to right of center) decided to let the leftwing alliance consisting of Social Democrats & Green party form a minority government, with support of the Left Party in the Riksdag.
Last December, after the Sweden Democrats sunk the left's budget by announcing they would vote for the budget proposal made by the Alliance. After much political wrangling, the so-called "December Agreement" (Decemberöverenskommelsen, DÖ, which funnily enough means "die" in Swedish) came to be in late December, where the Alliance promised to ensure that minority government budgets went through. This upset quite a large number of people in the four Alliance parties, as well as old school Social Democrats and probably a few old hardliners from the Left Party.
Now, to add to this, there is what people have named in an enormous thread on Swedish internet forum Flashback, the "beginning of a media war about multiculture?" - the thread started right after the 2010 elections, and is now up to 32000+ replies discussing, arguing and (correctly, it turns out) prediciting how certain media outlets will inevitably become more anti-immigration - all of these predictions turned out to be true. Earlier this year, Gothenburg newpaper Göteborgs-Poster (G-P from hereon) hired a new political editor in chief, liberal-conservative Romanian born Alice Teodorescu - this caused no end of butthurt among other editors and journalists, who either went on long term sick leave because of hurt fee-fees or simply resigned. While she doesn't outright support the Sweden Democrats, she is intellectually honest and is openly discussing the effects of immigration, the spiking costs, along with the political and cultural effects of Third World immigration.
Several other newspapers are also displaying political dissent in disturbing (if you are from any of the seven parties that aren't Sweden Democrats) amounts as well - most famously is probably Stockholm based Svenska Dagbladet (SvD from hereon), where editor Per Gudmundsson have written about Islamic terrorism & Islamic fundamentalism for years - but now, the rest of the paper is slowly catching up with him from time to time (on other occasions, they are again full retard). Many other smaller papers around the country are also now openly dissenting on their editorial pages as well. It is quite shocking to see the sometimes almost 180 degree turn that many of them have made in less than a year. Even famously leftist public service channel Sveriges Television (SVT) have been asking some very pointed and difficult questions, and recently they even allowed a representative from the Sweden Democrats to speak freely until he was done, without interrupting!
To add to all of this is some very clever campaigns by the Sweden Democrats, along with some bold statements by party leader Jimmie Ã…kesson made at
Almedal Week in early July, where he reminded listeners that they promised they would reach the Riksdag - and they did, they promised to double their numbers - and they did, and he also reminded them that they were going to be the biggest party - which they now are. Add this campaign here, mentioned in my
"Trolling as a political strategy" thread, which also shows one quarter of the Sweden Democrats' best campaign workers - the autonomous left, doing what they do best, which is to throw a complete and total shitfit, start fighting amongst themselves about inconsequential bullshit not related to the current issue at hand (the little demonstration they had quickly degenerated into "muh anti-capitalism, muh trans rights, muh feelz"), followed by acting like the thugs they are.
The second quarter of unintentional campaign workers for the Sweden Democrats are the politicians from other parties - whether is is famous Social Democratic window-licker
** Mona Sahlin, who declared, amongst other things that: "Swedes have to be integrated into the new Sweden, because the old Sweden isn't coming back", or "I believe that is the reason why many Swedes are envious of immigrant groups. You have a culture, something that binds you together. And what do we have? We have Midsummer's Eve and other silly things like that.", or former "conservative" Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt: "Ur-Swedish is pure barbarism.", or "we need to open our hearts", or "...I've flown over Sweden many times, and there's so much open space here"
***. People remember these things. People remember broken promises about "we will make proficiency in Swedish a requirement for getting a Swedish citizenship" - which never happened.
The third quarter of these unintentional campaign workers are criminal immigrants - and their defenders and those who try to play it down by saying "violence has decreased, we've never been safer". I'm thirty years old, I started to read the newspaper when I was probably about...7 perhaps. I sure as hell don't remember reading about shootings every week, about gang rapes, about cars exploding, about 30 explosions in Malmö just in 2015. This is where mainstream media plays an unwitting role - in their "if it bleeds it leads" they are helping the Sweden Democrats, because by reporting on grenades being thrown (and people can figure out that the one's responsible for that are more likely to Ali or Mohammad rather than Johan or Erik), people start thinking that maybe we should do something about it - the Sweden Democrats are also big on law & order, and while they haven't made any noises about that, I wouldn't be surprised if they have a plan somewhere for being able to strip citizenships from foreign born criminals, which is probably what people expect from them and would like to see.
The fourth quarter of the useful idiots/unintentional campaign workers for the Sweden Democrats - the Roma beggars from Bulgaria & Romania. They are literally everywhere. Every community large enough to have the smallest grocery store, you can count on atleast one Roma sitting there, cup in hand, "hej hej korona plizz?". Train stations, bus stations, metro stations, walking about bothering people who are sitting at outdoor tables at pubs or cafees, people enjoying a beer in the park - everyone sees them. And everyone reads the stories in the papers - see what I wrote about media & crime - about the million it cost to remove 21 tons of garbage from one of the sites they had occupied, and then clean it up and try to restore it. About how crimes against the elderly are suddenly on the rise, and the perpetrators are described as being swarthy-ish, garishly dressed and not speaking Swedish or speaking it badly. Pickpocketing, child prostitution, the always increasing demands to be able to set up camps where ever they want, the entitlement shown by squatting on public & private property.
With all of this in mind, and the increasing dissent being voiced by politicians from atleast six of the seven parties who aren't Sweden Democrats (dissent from members of the Green Party seems very unlikely), I wouldn't be surprised if the next election comes earlier than 2018. At which I expect the Sweden Democrats to have increased to probably 30-35% of the votes. The accusations of racism & fascism (atleast the ones thrown against the voters) have decreased markedly - I guess even media have realized how unlikely it is that a (very) possible quarter of the population have suddenly turned fascist.
*comparatively - all of out political parties are at, the most, level with blue-collar democrats when it comes to being conservative.
**former Social Democratic PM Göran Persson famously said about her: "One credits her with greater capacity than what she actually has...it is not that peculiar, what comes out of her mouth. But her strength isn't in thinking."
***compare with any East or West Coast liberal who makes statements about "flyover America".
edited for some minor spelling mistakes
