"Healthcare tops voters' priority list but rarely decides elections"

Sweden is one of the countries in the EU that spends the most money on health care.

Nevertheless, there are major shortcomings in terms of accessibility and equivalence across the country, as Assignment Review has shown.

In addition, two years of pandemic that put health care under severe pressure.

On paper, there is thus potential for the party that wants to make healthcare the big election issue of the year.

But despite the importance of the issue, it seems difficult to convince voters.

Just under a quarter think that the Social Democrats have the best policy, according to Novus, which gives the party a clear leadership position.

But a much larger proportion, 34 percent, can not state any party at all.

Ignorance of the electorate

One explanation is that the responsibility for healthcare lies with the regions, something that almost half of the voters are aware of.

In addition, knowledge of regional policy is low, just over seven out of ten cannot, for example, state what distinguishes the parties in health care policy.

Healthcare is also not an issue that voters can easily be for or against, such as immigration or increased taxes.

All in all, it reduces the possibility of a clear party-political conflict with enough nerve to decide how voters cast their vote.

It may be different in this year's election.

The Christian Democrats, who dominate the issue on the right, are putting their gunpowder on the promise of a "healthcare reform of the century" in which responsibility for healthcare is shifted from the 21 regions to six state healthcare regions.

A gigantic administrative reform that would take a long time to implement and which few voters will probably realize the extent of.

But for a small party like KD, it can be a winning question that can contribute to them taking voters from the Moderates, just like in 2018. According to the latest survey from the SOM Institute, a clear majority, 70 percent, think it is a good or a lot good proposal to let the state take over responsibility for healthcare.

S sees new opportunities

The Social Democrats are also preparing for an election movement where healthcare is one of the main issues.

Under the slogan "take back control of welfare", S plans to go to the polls on better terms for health care workers, a ban on private health insurance and a stop to privatization of emergency hospitals.

Those promises were also included in 2018, but then they paid a small dividend, the Social Democrats made their worst regional election ever.

But now, when the electorate has become even more negative to gains in welfare, the Riksdag's largest party sees new opportunities.

The Achilles' heel for the government is the care queues.

An election campaign where the opposition manages to start a dissatisfaction with increased waiting times can mean that the issue does not become the winning issue for S as it has traditionally been.

To prevent this, S wants to breathe life into the classic conflict between tax cuts and welfare.

It is not possible to shorten the care queues and at the same time reduce the tax that the "right-wing conservatives" want is a message that is likely to be repeated in the election debate.

M has the healthcare issue against him

One party that, on the other hand, is not so keen on an election campaign about healthcare is the Moderates.

Not only because they have low confidence in the issue but also because they know that the healthcare issue primarily benefits the Social Democrats and does not contribute to pulling voters from the other side of the bloc border, which is required if there is to be a change of power.