18.9.2006
Center-right coalition wins in the election, pirates unlikely to get to the parliament
As the counting of the votes continued late into the night in Sweden, the main result of the election started to become clear: Swedes will have a new government soon. The center-right 'Alliance' consisting of four parties seems to get a clear enough majority to form the next coalition government for Sweden. The Alliance victory was due to the sensational success of The Moderate Party - their share of votes was now 26.1 - almost 11 % more than in the previous election, promising to give them 97 seats in the new parliament where they now have only 55 seats. The chairman of the Moderate Party, Fredrik Reinfeldt, will evidently become the next prime minister of Sweden. The present prime minister Göran Persson has already announced to leave his post as the party leader of the Social Democrats due to the poor election result. The Left Party also lost a lot of votes while the Green Party was the only member of the present government coalition to increase its support.
How did the Pirate Party do? All we know at this stage is that the total share of votes for the small parties was 5.7 % - no information about the breakdown of these votes between different small parties is yet available. This share is 2.6 % more than in 2002 parliamentary election but it still seems too small to give Piratpartiet realistic chances to cross the 4 % vote thresold. Judging from the comments on Pirate party's discussion board the pirates themselves do not seem to believe they have made it to the parliament. So they are merely wishing to have a large enough share of that 5.7 % to get certain benefits for the party for its future political work. Even a 1.0 % share of votes would benefit them as they would get the expensive printing and laborous distribution of voting ballots done by the state election officials in the next election. 2.5 % is the next interesting limit, as that would entitle the party to financial support from the Swedish state - the more above 2.5 %, the larger the support.
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