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Far-right makes major gains in Swedish elections as ruling party scrapes a win
[IsraelTimes] Prime Minister Lofven says ’moral responsibility’ to combat anti-immigration party with neo-Nazi roots that won nearly 18% of the vote.After a campaign dominated by debates over immigration, the center-left Social Democratic Party emerged with the greatest share of the vote ‐ 28.4 percent as the count neared completion ‐ yet looking at holding fewer parliament seats and having its mandate to govern questioned. The potential for an immigration backlash to result in a big boost for the far-right Sweden Democrats inspired fear among many Swedes before the election. It received a little more than one in six votes, or 17.6 percent. Its showing was not as strong as the one-in-five polls had predicted, but good for a third-place finish that had the party’s leader telling supporters, "We won." Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, who brought the Social Democrats to power in 2014, said he intended to remain in the job. The leader of the Moderates party that came in second, Ulf Kristersson, already had called on Lofven to resign and claimed the right to form Sweden’s next government. Final election returns were expected later in the week. The preliminary results made it unlikely any party would secure a majority of 175 seats in the 349-seat Riksdag, Sweden’s parliament. It could take weeks or months of coalition talks before the next government is formed. Both the left-leaning bloc led by the Social Democrats and the center-right bloc in which the Moderates is largest of four parties have said they would refuse to consider the Sweden Democrats as a coalition partner. Posted by: trailing wife 2018-09-10 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=522596 |