Reader Letter: This Is a Fateful Election, Not a Wallet Election

Sweden is facing a “fateful election,” not merely a choice between promises of free preschool and cheaper dental care, writes Gunnar Smideman in a reader letter published by Dagens Nyheter.

With only a few days left before the election, Smideman criticizes the flood of opinion polls and agrees with an earlier contributor who argued that surveys should be banned during the month before voting. He asks what purpose the polls serve beyond raising the tension like a football league final. In his view, media outlets benefit through newspaper sales, clicks and high viewing figures, while the election itself becomes trivialized as a question of which “team” will win.

The writer argues that the central issue is no longer which policies or ideology will shape the country over the next four years. Debates, news reports and features focus instead on individual issues and the contest between political teams, as though a long-term plan and an overarching ideology no longer mattered.

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We have taken our democratic freedoms and rights so much for granted that we do not even notice how they are gradually being reduced.

Citing philosopher Åsa Wikforss’s latest book, “Democracy’s Moment of Truth,” Smideman warns that democracy can slide quickly and almost unnoticed into authoritarianism and autocracy. He says science and facts are being contemptuously pushed aside for emotional arguments, while media outlets treat politics as a game rather than as questions that will affect the future of society and its children.

Smideman says politicians have joined this pursuit of short-term financial concerns and political spectacle, while social media dynamics reward conflict, clicks and likes. He concludes that voters face a choice between restoring parts of democracy that he says have been dismantled over the past four years and continuing a slide toward authoritarianism that could leave lasting marks.

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It is a fateful election, in which we can either begin restoring the parts of democracy that have been dismantled over the past four years, much more than most people realize, or continue sliding toward authoritarianism.