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General Election, Election Survey 2014:

Voters on the move

Statistical news from Statistics Sweden 2016-02-01 9.30

Voter volatility in Sweden remains at a historically high level. The proportion of floating voters between the 2010 and 2014 Riksdag election was 36 percent. Accounts of an increasingly volatile electorate are well-known, but also very one-sided. Considerable voter volatility no longer means that voters are lost or confused. The ideological orientation and standpoints of political issues clearly mark the limits for the scope, character and effects of voter volatility.

The report Floating voters presents for the first time a compilation of in-depth analyses of Swedish voter volatility. Based on the Swedish election surveys 1956–2014, voter volatility is illustrated between the parties during election campaigns and between elections. Analyses of voter volatility provide greater insight about the signals voters want to send to the democratic system by their behaviour at the ballot boxes.

The author of the report Floating voters is Professor Henrik Ekengren Oscarsson, head of the Swedish National Election Studies Program at University of Gothenburg. This is the second report in the series Democracy Statistics with a focus on voter behaviour in the 2014 election.

Feel free to use the facts from this statistical news but remember to state Source: Statistics Sweden.

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Henrik Oscarsson

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Jonas Olofsson

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