The last votes (early votes and those cast abroad) are being counted right now and the more or less final results will come in right now or tomorrow.
A relatively short and basic explanation of the Swedish general election: it's held every 4 years and is composed of three separate elections for three different types of elective assemblies:
People are free to vote for differently for each type of assembly or only vote one or two of them. People can only vote for a party and its electoral list so there are no independent candidates (although one can give a "personal vote" specifically for someone on that list, which affects the order that the candidates are afforded a seat). The voting system is proportional so the percentage of votes that any one party receives is roughly proportional to the percentage of seats they win, although a party needs to get at least 4% of votes to be elected to the Riksdag at all.
Sweden is organized as unitary state where "All public power in Sweden proceeds from the people and the Riksdag is the foremost representative of the people". Consequently the Counties and Municipalities have no independent legal powers and authority except those delegated to them by the Riksdag which can also abolish, merge or otherwise reorganize them as it sees fit.
The Riksdag essentially decides what the Municipalities and Counties absolutely need to do and what they are allowed to do without necessarily dictating precisely how they are to do it, so to speak. Thus they are fairly autonomous and the Central Government nor the Riksdag is expected to not interfere in Municipal and County political decisions except in the most exceptional of cases.
The Municipalities are not subservient or otherwise answer to the Counties and they are politically and practically independent of each-other. Likewise they have more or less separate yet complementary responsibilities. The counties main responsibility is public health care and public transportation. By contrast the Municipalities have more varied responsibilities such as public schools, social services, elderly care, urban planning and most public utilities. They can operate or otherwise support various public leisure and sporting activities and facilities like public swimming pools, football fields and hockey arenas.
The Municipalities and Counties are mainly funded by income taxes from their resident, where they can set their own rates within a certain limit. There is however a scheme that helps fund some of the poorer of them by effectively redistributing taxes from the wealthy ones so that the difference in public services available in the different municipalities shouldn't be extreme. So that basically describes why it matters to vote in those two elections: do you want less taxes and less public services or more taxes and have access to more public services?
The Riksdag is on the other hand arguably more important because it deals with issues that applies to the entire realm. This includes all aspects of laws and law enforcement, the military, foreign policy and trade. It also elects The Government, or "Regeringen". In comparison to many other countries The Swedish Government is relatively weak and is largely relegated to acting as an overseer of public institutions like the Police or the Military, as opposed to leading them. Normally most of the Governments power comes from also having support of a majority in parliament. If, as has been the case since the last previous election, the Government only has support of a minority of parliament it ends up being far weaker.
The important political parties today are, from their customary position along the left-wing to right-wing scale and with their official abbreviation: The Leftist Party (V), The Social Democrats (S), The Environmental Party (MP), The Centre Party (C), The Liberals (L), The Moderates (M), The Christian Democrats (KD) and finally the Sweden Democrats (SD).
Here's the English version of the a website that visualizes who won where and how various demographic statistics correlate with the electoral results.
https://www.svt.se/special/the-swedish-vote/
Just to reiterate: the Swedish voting system is proportional so it doesn't matter how many constituencies or electoral districts you manage to win it's the amount of votes in total that you win that's important.
A relatively short and basic explanation of the Swedish general election: it's held every 4 years and is composed of three separate elections for three different types of elective assemblies:
- The National Parliament, or Riksdag, which is unicameral with 349 seats in total
- The County Councils, or Landsting, of which there are 20
- The Municipal Councils, or Kommunfullmäktige, of which there are 290
People are free to vote for differently for each type of assembly or only vote one or two of them. People can only vote for a party and its electoral list so there are no independent candidates (although one can give a "personal vote" specifically for someone on that list, which affects the order that the candidates are afforded a seat). The voting system is proportional so the percentage of votes that any one party receives is roughly proportional to the percentage of seats they win, although a party needs to get at least 4% of votes to be elected to the Riksdag at all.
Sweden is organized as unitary state where "All public power in Sweden proceeds from the people and the Riksdag is the foremost representative of the people". Consequently the Counties and Municipalities have no independent legal powers and authority except those delegated to them by the Riksdag which can also abolish, merge or otherwise reorganize them as it sees fit.
The Riksdag essentially decides what the Municipalities and Counties absolutely need to do and what they are allowed to do without necessarily dictating precisely how they are to do it, so to speak. Thus they are fairly autonomous and the Central Government nor the Riksdag is expected to not interfere in Municipal and County political decisions except in the most exceptional of cases.
The Municipalities are not subservient or otherwise answer to the Counties and they are politically and practically independent of each-other. Likewise they have more or less separate yet complementary responsibilities. The counties main responsibility is public health care and public transportation. By contrast the Municipalities have more varied responsibilities such as public schools, social services, elderly care, urban planning and most public utilities. They can operate or otherwise support various public leisure and sporting activities and facilities like public swimming pools, football fields and hockey arenas.
The Municipalities and Counties are mainly funded by income taxes from their resident, where they can set their own rates within a certain limit. There is however a scheme that helps fund some of the poorer of them by effectively redistributing taxes from the wealthy ones so that the difference in public services available in the different municipalities shouldn't be extreme. So that basically describes why it matters to vote in those two elections: do you want less taxes and less public services or more taxes and have access to more public services?
The Riksdag is on the other hand arguably more important because it deals with issues that applies to the entire realm. This includes all aspects of laws and law enforcement, the military, foreign policy and trade. It also elects The Government, or "Regeringen". In comparison to many other countries The Swedish Government is relatively weak and is largely relegated to acting as an overseer of public institutions like the Police or the Military, as opposed to leading them. Normally most of the Governments power comes from also having support of a majority in parliament. If, as has been the case since the last previous election, the Government only has support of a minority of parliament it ends up being far weaker.
The important political parties today are, from their customary position along the left-wing to right-wing scale and with their official abbreviation: The Leftist Party (V), The Social Democrats (S), The Environmental Party (MP), The Centre Party (C), The Liberals (L), The Moderates (M), The Christian Democrats (KD) and finally the Sweden Democrats (SD).
Here's the English version of the a website that visualizes who won where and how various demographic statistics correlate with the electoral results.
https://www.svt.se/special/the-swedish-vote/
Just to reiterate: the Swedish voting system is proportional so it doesn't matter how many constituencies or electoral districts you manage to win it's the amount of votes in total that you win that's important.
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/2CYzxjk
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