Ett liv efter Nya Moderaterna?

Abstract

Life after “The New Moderate Party”?

The purpose of this article is to contribute with explanations regarding the election result of the Moderate Party in 2014. The Moderate Party received 23.3 percent of the votes compared to 30.1 in the election 2010. We use media coverage, party internal documents and voter surveys to investigate why the Moderate Party suffered such a large election defeat. The analyses are structured to track politically relevant developments in three arenas: the electoral, the party internal and the parliamentary arena.

In the electoral arena the Moderate Party lost many of its voters to the Sweden Democrats mainly due to the party’s positions on immigration issues. There was also a significant voter loss to the Social Democrats. In the party internal arena we see organizational confusion and bad planning during 2011. The Moderate Party made significant ideological changes before 2006, but the ideological development stagnated after 2010. A further contributing fact to the poor election result could be a sense of limited influence among some parts of the middle cadre, i.e. the parliamentary members of the Moderate party.