Niklas Ekdal: The Tidö bloc’s biggest problem fits into one word

Sweden’s 2026 election has produced a striking number of unanswered questions. The cultural-war divisions that shaped the 2022 campaign have blurred, while the traditional left-right scale offers less guidance than before. Voters face uncertainty over immigration, crime, healthcare, schools, public finances, energy prices and the size of the welfare state.

But Niklas Ekdal argues that an even more confusing issue lies in a small, heavily charged word: “the people.” Each party gives it a different meaning. For the Moderates, it refers to working taxpayers who want to manage on their own. The Social Democrats associate it with wage earners, families with children and pensioners. The Sweden Democrats use it in a national, ethnically Swedish sense. The Left Party contrasts ordinary people with an economic elite, while the Centre Party emphasizes small-business owners and people outside political power centers.

That division, Ekdal writes, offers an underestimated explanation for the Liberals’ difficulties in opinion polls. The party has traditionally used a more open definition of the people, a legacy reflected in its former name, the People’s Party. That approach fits less easily with identity politics.

Ekdal also presents the governing bloc’s performance as an election-year mystery. The Tidö parties have delivered on pledges to fight crime, restrict immigration, support consumers, cut taxes and combat inflation. Yet they remain far behind the position enjoyed by the Alliance in 2010, when Fredrik Reinfeldt’s Moderates won more than 30 percent and the coalition was re-elected.

To explore the puzzle, Ekdal turns to a century-long perspective and theology. He cites Åbo Akademi professor Bengt Kristensson Uggla’s new book, “No One Escapes the Fantastic,” which discusses the 1930s concept of a people’s church formulated by Bishop Einar Billing. The historical question was much like today’s: who belongs to the community, and should it preserve an inherited identity or expand it?

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The people