EU Elections: Why the Left Did Surprisingly Well in the Nordics

You will have already heard a lot about EU elections: from the rise of the right, Macron's sudden election, and Germany's AfD. But, the Nordics appeared to have gone into the opposite direction than the rest of Europe with left-wing, green, and far-left parties all making gains.

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00:00 - Introduction
00:56 - Context
02:58 - Why the Left Did Well
06:24 - Conclusion
06:53 - Sponsored Content

[TLDRnewsEU]

CLARIFICATION: At 1:22 in this video, we say that Sweden had the most left-leaning results of any EU country. This is true, but it was equalled by Portugal, which also gave 10 out of 21 seats to left-wing and far-left parties. Eight seats went to the Partido Socialista (which sits in the EU's Socialists & Democrats bloc), one seat went to the Bloco de Esquerda (which sits in the EU's Left bloc), and one seat went to the Unitary Democratic Coalition (which also sits in the EU's Left bloc). Thanks for watching!

[terryaltherr]

I was confused why you didn't talk about Norway and I remembered Norway isn't an EU member lol

[larsnilsson]

I'm Swedish and I think your analysis is accurate. Well done! However, I might add that historically there has only been a weak correlation between results in the EU-elections and in the elections for our national parliament. In our national elections there is often a fair amount of tactical voting.

[Raprada]

I love the Swedes’ Eurovision-style exit poll reveal more than I should

[kevinmattsson]

Small Note, the only party in Sweden which actually lost a mandate was the Christian Democrats (KD), meanwhile the Left Party (V) gained a seat, so overall the mandates didn't change dramatically.

[xSimonTan]

SVT making everything Eurovision is so funny

[lmao]

Sweden also had a huge 'strong candidate effect' in jonas sjöstedt who was previously the leader of the left party, and who always polled ridiculously well

[khatack]

The nationalists of nordics tend to be pretty anti-eu, the voters more so than the parties themselves, and thus as some sort of protest they tend to not vote in EU elections.

[vem]

In Finland, right-wing voters were not as invested in the election as leftists, and the Left Alliance leader Andersson is extremely popular, getting nearly 14% of all votes just by herself, the most ever in a Finnish election outside the presidential elections.

[jonahthrane]

As a dane i am pretty into danish politics, and if you look into the policies of even our "socialist" parties they are also very anti-immigrant.
We have an EU test organised by "altinget", a newspaper in denmark, and they make questions, which the politicians answer, those questions included questions on immigration.
Youre then supposed to take the test yourself, and figure out who you most agree with. But you can also just see all the politicians answers.

The main kandidate for the danish social democrats answered very anti-immigration on all migration related questions.
1: Eu should have more boats in the Mediterranean to save the migrants? She answered disagree.
2: We should have migrant centers outside of the eu. She said agree.

In denmark even the leftist parties are against migration, which most leftists parties arent in most of europe, which is why right parties have seen a surge in the rest of europe.
4/6 main candidates for left leaning parties all answered agree or strongly agree to having asylum centers outside of the EU.
I cant speak for sweden, but in denmark every party is more or less for deporting migrants if not at minimum illegal migrants, and immigrants of all sorts who have been caught in criminal acts.

So if youre already a socialist, and want stronger immigration policies, you dont have to change sides in denmark, because even socialist parties want fewer immigrants.

[daniel-vrpw]

Denmark's social democrats aren't really left at this point

[tjay]

I can’t speak for all nordic countries.. But the two most important issues in Denmark were Climate Change and Defence (i.e Russia, and support for Ukraine). Both are topics that the right don’t tend to excel at..

[MegaMegatron]

Meanwhile in Sweden, we have Jonas Sjöstedt, a former party-leader for the Left Party, who is extremely popular, experienced and well-respected. He was a magnet on the left.

[loerl]

@0:28 This is wrong. The center-right Finnish Coalition Party, whose emblem is shown here, didn't lose vote share. Instead, the populist right wing ECR Finns Party lost big time.

[jeffafa]

Something similar also happened in The Netherlands: The biggest party in our national elections was the PVV (by far), but the biggest party in our EU elections was GL-PvdA, also with a low turnout rate.

[andrepettersson]

It is important to point out EU elections do not translate to national elections in Sweden. Something like what happened in France where new elections would never be called based on EU election results for example. People acting like the national elections will swing left now because of the EU vote but to put it into context the last times the greens did well in an EU election 15% in 2014 their national election results that same year was 6.89%. It just dosen't translate.

[mackmaster]

One thing that I think this analysis misses is regarding Swedens stance on climate change as a political issue for the EU. Here in Sweden combating climate change has become one of the most prominent questions associated with EU elections, and less so with national politics. This is due to the rationale that climate change is global challenge which sees no borders. Parties with strong/trustworthy platforms on combating climate change have therefore done well.

[oyuyuy]

You missed the mark. It is almost universally agreed upon in Sweden that 'climate and environment' are the most important questions for EU - that's why we vote more left in EU elections. The right simply has less ambitious environmental goals.

[RabbitShirak]

The Finns Party, it could be that their voters don't care for EU elections. Or, their popularity has dropped because they're in the government now. Hard to say which is it or maybe even both.

[seneca]

For me, the most surprising part of the results here in Finland was that the Left Alliance got more seats than the Social Democrats.