ANALYSIS: High fuel prices pave the way for a tug-of-war over rural voters

The war in Ukraine has led all parties to adjust their electoral plans.

But the tug-of-war over rural voters seems to continue.

Both KD and SD put in this election an extra gear to convince more of those who live in the countryside.

That calculation includes an increased polarization between city and country.

It is about a latent conflict between the city's political and economic elite and those who feel abandoned and forgotten in places where the population is shrinking.

The ambition is not new, it has been included in several elections and was strengthened in 2018 when several parties imagined a similar development as we saw in the US with Trump and in the UK with Brexit.

But then none of the parties seriously succeeded in minting the city-country dimension as a line of political conflict.

Now with record high fuel prices, the potential is greater.

Lack of community service, poor infrastructure, high municipal taxes and reduced state presence are other issues that can fuel the debate.

Lower confidence among rural voters

The fact that voters in rural areas are somewhat less satisfied with Swedish democracy and have slightly lower confidence in our elected representatives are also factors that could give a boost to those parties that want to exploit a gap between city and country.

There is also a difference when it comes to faith in the future.

The party that has grown the most outside the big cities in recent elections is the Sweden Democrats.

But this is not mainly because they have profiled themselves in classic rural issues, but because the proportion of voters who want a tighter refugee policy is greater in rural areas than in large cities.

Along with SD, the Christian Democrats are the ones who most explicitly want to win new voters in the city and country dimension.

With inspiration from the USA, Ebba Busch (KD) highlights "the Swedish heartland", a kind of continuation of the concept "people of reality".

- We hear the cries, we feel the anger and frustration from the parts of Sweden that have been overlooked.

When we meet the voters next time, we will do it as Sweden's new rural and small town party, as the KD leader put it in his speech at the party's parliament in November.

Want to attract disappointed C-voters

The focus is on disappointed center voters who disapprove of the idea of ​​a new collaboration with an S-led government.

Those who can be convinced that a vote for the Center Party is in practice a vote for the Green Party.

So far, the old Farmers' Union takes the challenge calmly and emphasizes that they only benefit from more parties raising rural issues.

There are also several factors that speak against an increased contradiction between city and country.

First, the differences are highly marginal in terms of satisfaction with important societal institutions such as healthcare, schools and the police.

Secondly, rural voters are not a homogeneous group of voters, those who live in real sparsely populated areas have other problems and want to see other measures from our elected representatives than those who live within commuting distance of a medium-sized city.

Finally, the left-right conflict remains very important for the party election despite increased competition from the cultural value issues.

Ultimately, therefore, the parties must analyze the potential of voters in rural areas and weigh it against the risk of repelling big city voters if they fire on an antagonism between big city and rural areas.