The Swedish regional elections 2018

Abstract

The Swedish regional elections of 2018 show a consistently high electoral turnout in all regions, and large vote-share variations for different parties across regions. There are not much second order election effects, but at the same time, the nationalization effects are less than could have been expected due to the vertical and horizontal simultaneous elections. In spite of concurrent elections, ticket splitting in Sweden has increased over time: about 30% of Swedish voters vote for different parties at different political levels. The voting pattern does not fit with typical expectations of voting-behaviour following dissatisfaction with the national government. Especially the electoral success of regional healthcare parties in some regions clearly indicate genuinely separate choice processes, more in line with a multi-level understanding of a political system with clear distribution of competences, as healthcare remain the most important task of the regions.