Sweden’s parliamentary elections are looking to be an incredibly close race after an early lead for the right-of-center coalition in the exit polls. But there are already two clear observations worth making:

• Results for a mock election for schoolkids (“Skolval 2006”) have two outsider parties above 4%, which would be the cut-off for representation in the real parliament. Piratpartiet, a new anti-copyright pro-file sharing party, nabbed 4.5% of the school vote, while the xenophobic Sverigedemokraterna got 4.3% of the (mock) vote. Neither party will be represented in the real parliament (and students who know their vote doesn’t rally count are liable to be more rash) but this is definitely a trend to watch for the future. Piratpartiet wasn’t around in the last elections, but the Sverigedemokraterna were, and their vote in 2002 was negligible. In other words, it’s a troubling development.
• During the early exit polls, among outsider parties the Feminist Initiative (FI) was forecast to get 1% of the vote, whereas the frankly noxious Sverigedemokraterna (SD) were forecast at 1.9% of the vote — their strongest result yet, up from 1.44% in 2002. And yet we were treated to a five-minute interview with the leader of FI, whereas no representatives of SD were invited to comment.
   
  I think that’s a big mistake, and it is the same mistake that Belgium’s political and media establishment has been making for the past decade with Vlaams block/Belang. Sweden’s establishment ignores SD at their own risk. Just like the Vlaams Belang, SD will thrive on this outsider status. Election coverage is not supposed to be a feel-good event — if twice as many Swedes voted for the xenophobes as the feminists, then the xenophobes’ opinions must be probed.
   
  I think it’s obvious why SD should be brought into the electoral debate: If you believe that voters are on the whole rational — as you must if you believe in a democracy — then you cannot justify shielding the electorate from the party platform of SD. Their ideas need to find their way into the open, so that they can be forcefully argued against by other parties as part of the political debate. Until that happens, SD will continue to get votes from people who are voting against the other parties, without having to face themselves about what they are voting for.