During the first months of the corona crisis, confidence rose sharply for health care, the authorities, the government and the prime minister himself. At the same time, the largest government party, the Social Democrats, made significant strides in opinion polls.

In the SVT / Novus voter barometer, the Social Democrats increased by over eight percentage points between February and May.

But the pinnacle of opinion may now have passed for the Social Democrats. According to Novus's investigation, confidence in the government is raging. By mid-April, 30 percent had very high confidence in the government. Today, that group has dropped to 17 percent, which is about the same level as in the first survey in March.

Reduced confidence in MSB

Confidence and opinion figures often follow one another, which indicates that even opinion support may now be on the way down for the Social Democrats. Upcoming voter barometers will be of high interest.

However, confidence falls not only to the government but also to the health service, the Public Health Authority, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other authorities that deal with the corona crisis. Confidence in SVT and SR also decreases. Not least, confidence has fallen to MSB, whose role at the daily press conferences is sometimes perceived as both unclear and unclear. The public actually has lower confidence in MSB today than before the corona crisis.

Also for SVT, confidence decreases somewhat but not at all to the same extent as for government and the authorities.

That confidence in government and government now falls is due to several things. An important explanation is that the corona crisis has now entered a new phase. The first time was marked by national unity and agreement on the Swedish strategy. Gradually, more and more of questioning and criticism has been put forward. There are also several concrete examples where Sweden stands out in less flattering ways. It is likely to affect the confidence of authorities and decision makers.

Tests and death rates

One such issue is the significantly higher death rates in Sweden than in comparable countries such as Denmark, Finland and Norway. Another is that elderly housing generally seems to have been hit harder in Sweden than in most other countries. What this is because nobody can answer yet.

Another example that is likely to affect confidence is the debate about testing. Here, the government stated that 100,000 people would be tested per week. However, there have been no more than just over 35,000 a week. Here, the government and the regions have blamed each other and the responsibilities are unclear. At the same time, it is a fact that the government has not achieved the promised volume, which does not help to boost confidence.

At the beginning of the corona crisis there was a wide popular support for the Swedish corona strategy. Otherwise, the high confidence figures cannot be interpreted then. The Swedish strategy clearly deviated from most other countries' strategies and was based more on voluntarism than on compulsory bans. If it was right or wrong, of course, no one can answer yet, but with clearly higher death rates than in most other countries, it will of course be harder to claim that it has been successful.

This is particularly evident for Swedes who now see other countries opening up their communities after the crisis, while the death toll here in Sweden continues to appear alarmingly high.