"It's about winning the story of crisis management in the long term"

Today, sharp criticism from Jonas Sjöstedt is directed at the government's handling of the corona pandemic. But Henrik Ekengren Oscarsson, professor of electoral research at the University of Gothenburg, does not think it will affect the image of the government's work.

- This crisis has brought up completely different issues such as finance, employment and welfare on the agenda. These are traditionally issues that are more of home planning issues for the Social Democrats. Suddenly, it is a completely different prerequisite for large responsible government parties, to show what they are traditionally good at, to have policies that address these major policy areas.

The latest Novus poll for May shows that Social Democrats have increased voter support by 31.5 percent. The Moderates are the second largest party with 19.2 percent and SD the third largest party with 18.0 percent.

- Sweden is not unique, many governments that have received increased support in opinion polls at the beginning of this crisis. Even Donald Trump had clearly higher opinion figures at the beginning of this, than he has in the past. But it seems that the Social Democrats got off to a very good start in voter opinion at the beginning of March and that trend is in. Maybe more so than in other countries.

Has the government come away too cheap when it comes to criticism from the media and the opposition parties?

- You can draw parallels to the financial crisis, where many governments around the world were given a lot of blow for their handling of the global financial crisis. On the contrary, the alliance government in Sweden was on the contrary rewarded by the electorate. It can go either way for a government and it depends on how voters perceive it to handle the crisis. It's about winning the story of crisis management in the long term.

One possible forecast is that after the next election there will only be six parties in the Riksdag: V, S, C, M, SD and KD.

- If you think that there will be a discussion about the government base where it is excluded to rule with V and SD, then there are not many combinations left. It guarantees that there will be less of confrontation and bullshit between opposition and government, right what it is you will sit and handle crisis together. If you want to have influence in Swedish politics during the 2020s, you have to make sure not to burn too many bridges, says Henrik Ekengren Oscarsson.