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Voting for the Radical Right in Swedish Municipalities: Social Marginality and Ethnic Competition?
Author(s) -
Rydgren Jens,
Ruth Patrick
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
scandinavian political studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.65
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-9477
pISSN - 0080-6757
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9477.2011.00269.x
Subject(s) - competition (biology) , demographic economics , per capita , ethnic group , parliament , immigration , unemployment , radical right , voting , political science , unemployment rate , gross domestic product , product (mathematics) , economics , politics , demography , sociology , economic growth , ecology , population , law , biology , geometry , mathematics
Sweden is no longer a negative, exceptional case regarding the presence of radical right‐wing populist parties. The Sweden Democrats has continually grown stronger, and in 2010 they won seats in the Swedish parliament. However, their electoral support varies considerably across Sweden. This study analyses their electoral support in 290 Swedish municipalities in order to explain this variance. Support is found for the social marginality hypothesis: electoral support for the Sweden Democrats tends to be negatively correlated with the average level of education and with the Gross Regional Product per capita, and positively correlated with the unemployment rate. The ethnic competition hypothesis, that there is a positive correlation between the proportion of immigrants and electoral support of the Sweden Democrats, is also supported.