Making any prognosis decidedly very risky

The "valstuga" are back. As all four years, at the end of the summer, small cottages covered with posters have returned on the sidewalks of the cities of Sweden. A usual, political party activists lead campaign, distributing leaflets and brochures. Carefully aligned. Without animosity apparent. Held the third Sunday of September, the elections in the Scandinavian Kingdom following an unchanging ritual. In the results: the Social Democrats almost always eventually prevail.

But this year, the machine could derail. Eternal opposition Center-right, once is not custom, has a serious chance of winning the legislative elections of tomorrow. The four so-called "bourgeois" parties are shoulder to shoulder with the three formations of left in the polls, after have long exceeded them in voting intentions. "The elections have never been also undecided for twenty years", confirms Sören Holmberg, Professor of political science at the University of Gothenburg.

"For the first time, the center-right parties are United with a common agenda", noted, with satisfaction, Johnny Munkhammar, one of the leaders of the "think tank" liberal Timbro. And they themselves are seriously refocused, under the leadership of their new leader, Fredrik Reinfeldt, a very popular quadragénaire. Component of this fact, a credible alternative to the perennial Social Democrats.

"The lessons of the humiliating defeat of 2002 have been selected", note Henrik Brors, domestic political chief editor of the "Dagens Nyheter", the Swedish daily newspaper of reference. More question for them, to massively lower taxes, cut public spending, short of dealing with the welfare State, to which a vast majority of Swedes is fiercely attached. Gathered in an Alliance, "bourgeois" parties have campaigned this year a very "democratic", offering just to correct a number of shortcomings of the social model in force.

A certain weariness

They particularly insisted on the persistence of significant unemployment (see below) and the need to push the jobless to resume activity. In its programme, the Alliance suggested to reduce the amount of the very comfortable unemployment benefits, lower the heavy taxation of low incomes and alleviate the burdens on the wages of less than 25 years to make work more attractive than social assistance.

Ideas that have found, it seems, a rather favourable echo in the electorate. Unemployment, including youth, is the main area of concern in Sweden, according to polls. And is a black point in the balance sheet of the outgoing Government.

The Alliance also enjoys a certain weariness for the Social Democrats, at the head of the Government since 1994 and power during... 65 to 74 years! Many Swedes want alternating. "The Social Democrats have more projects, if it is to hold on to power", advanced Anna Kinberg-Batra, one of the candidates of the Alliance in Parliament, many decided to take advantage of this desire to change.

"Authoritarian, sometimes arrogant" Prime Minister outgoing, Göran Persson, also irritates many of his countrymen, says Barbro Hedvall, columnist for the "Dagens Nyheter". And the Manager image of his party has been wounded by the chaotic evacuation of Swedish nationals of Thailand after the tsunami in December 2004. A real national tragedy for the Kingdom: 543 Swedish have been killed.

But Goeran Persson caught up since then, with the repatriation succeeded, this summer, of his fellow citizens to the Lebanon and the Organization, on 31 August, in Stockholm, a Conference on the reconstruction of the country of the Cedar. And there is never an opportunity to put forward the flattering his Government's economic record: growth of nearly 4 expected this year, after 2.7 last year, public of 2 of GDP surplus, inflation limited to 1.8, etc. "the Social Democrats have never lost to parliamentary elections in the period of expansion", said a diplomat.

What remain confident, despite the very tight polls. And an electoral espionage scandal (see opposite) has somewhat weakened the Alliance in the last straight line of the campaign. Making any prognosis decidedly very risky.