21.9.2006
Final results of the Swedish election ready
The official counting of the votes has been
finished in Sweden. Pirate Party ended up as the third largest of the 'small parties' with 34.918 votes, competing tightly for the second place with the
Feminist Initiative that took 37.954 votes. By far the largest small party was the anti-immigration party
Sweden Democrats who took 162.463 votes, only some 50.000 votes shy of getting their candidates through to the parliament.
The result means that on the average every registered Pirate Party member managed to get about 3 other voters to cast their vote for the pirates. Even if the result did not bring the much-desired parliamentary power to the pirates, they managed to establish themself as a serious candidate in the coming elections, and they will certainly not be ignored by the Swedish media in the future as an insignificant small party. They also managed to make filesharing and privacy issues an important election theme, and the public debate on these issues continues in Sweden.
The Swedish political climate has been very mobile during recent years. This is highlighted by the poor success of
June List. This small party had a sensational success in the EU Parliament election in 2004 capturing 14% of the Swedish votes and three EU parliament seats. In this election Pirate Party won June List with a margin of almost 9000 votes.