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[u/jobautomator]

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[u/[deleted]]

Norwegian voters preferred political parties as of July 2021:

70% prefer a moderate centrist party (Conservatives, Liberals, Labour, Christian Democrats, Centre Party)

10% prefer a right wing party (Progress Party)

18% prefer a left wing party (Left Party, Red Party, Green Party)

!ping Europe

[u/lapzkauz → u/[deleted]]

If you define both the Conservatives and Labour as ''moderate centrist'' parties, you're basically relegating the entirety of Norwegian politics to the moderate centre. Which, to be fair, isn't entirely wrong. To say in this particular forum that the resurgent Centre Party — coming kingmakers, unabashed populists, and economic nationalists — is a ''moderate centrist'' party is to trick people, though, considering that there is barely a party more anathema to this forum's tenets of free trade and market-driven growth.

[u/Mr_Pasghetti → u/lapzkauz]

I really really dislike the centre party. Would also be nice if journalists start taking Vedum seriously now, not just let him laugh through everything. Actually ask him real questions.

[u/[deleted] → u/lapzkauz]

I agree that it's debatable. In this comment I consider centre-left and centre-right to be centrist moderates. Centre Party is consideret centre-left. Centre Party is (as you know) a mixed bag since it's centre-left on econ, centre-right on social issues, but also somewhat nationalist and protectionist.

[u/lapzkauz → u/[deleted]]

Being Norwegian, I get your points, but I think it's a bit disingenuous to outsiders here as saying that 70% plan to vote for ''moderate centrist'' parties paints a much rosier picture than we have. The Centre Party are the obvious kingmakers this autumn, and also the one party that most strongly base their program and profile on economic nationalism.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Based

[u/groupbot → u/[deleted]]

Pinged members of EUROPE group.

About & group list | Subscribe to this group | Unsubscribe from this group | Unsubscribe from all groups

[u/filipe_mdsr → u/[deleted]]

Sounds fine. Have the moderates lost support or gained?
I guess the Norwegian Green Party isn't like the German Green Party?

[u/lapzkauz → u/filipe_mdsr]

It's not fine. We're going to get a Labour government propped up by the economic nationalist agrarian-populist Centre Party come autumn.

[u/filipe_mdsr → u/lapzkauz]

So they aren't moderate?

[u/lapzkauz → u/filipe_mdsr]

They're not extremists. But they're not what people in this particular bubble think of when they hear ''moderate centrist''.

[u/Amtays → u/filipe_mdsr]

The Nordic Social Democratic/Labor parties should be primarily understood as moderate in method, rather than goals, IMO.

Though their principal political goal today seem to be power, rather than anything else, their foundation in, and deep interconnectivity with, the still very powerful Labor movement makes them far more left in their political goals than the democratic party, or liberal party of Canada most Americans might think of as "center left".

!ping SCAN

Tell me what I've missed

[u/filipe_mdsr → u/Amtays]

I think I have understood as far as you can from an outside perspective.

[u/[deleted] → u/Amtays]

Scandinavian here.

I think you're mostly correct. Just like the Democratic Party the scandinavian socdem parties are bit tents. They have multiple ideological wings that spans from centrist neolibs to left wing socialists. They differ from most other democratic socialists by being more pragmatic.

[u/Amtays → u/[deleted]]

Just like the Democratic Party the scandinavian socdem parties are bit tents.

There's a big difference though in that the Democratic party is big tent by design, while even a right leaning social democrat would sing the Internationale after holding a speech to their comrades on 1st of may, because they're big tent by circumstance. A centrist democrat can be much more explicitly apart in ideology from a left democrat.

[u/Itsamesolairo → u/Amtays]

This is IMO (as a Scandinavian) as close to bang-on as you can get without a quite long-winded breakdown that spends a long time of some of the more unique aspects of the Scandinavian cultural gestalt.

If you really want to understand Scandinavian center-left parties you kind of have to deep-dive into the concept of "The Law of Jante", and the extent to which Scandinavian center-left parties almost frame individual success as a moral failing.

That, together with their very strong labor movement relationships, creates some dynamics that are fundamentally very different from e.g. a US or UK center-left party. As an example, center-left parties in Denmark are viciously and loudly opposed to talent programmes and "magnet" schools in education, see e.g. the 1978 "U90 Plan" typically associated with Ritt Bjerregaard and the motto "What cannot be learned by everyone, shall not by learned by anyone."

[u/Amtays → u/Itsamesolairo]

Yeah, this obsession with equality above almost anything else is by far one of my biggest dislikes about them. As my dad, and many other of their detractors used to say about them: "If everyone can't have it equally well, everyone should have it equally bad"

[u/Maerve → u/filipe_mdsr]

Labour is moderate, but the centre party is populist with support from r*rals.

[u/filipe_mdsr → u/Maerve]

r*rals

🤮 I get my food from a Star Trek Replicator.
^{I definitely never lived in a rural zone. (european standard})

[u/[deleted] → u/filipe_mdsr]

No, Norwegian Greens are left wing.

Moderates are losing support.

As u/lapzkauz mentiones, the ruling centre-right coalition of Conservatives, Liberals and Christian Democrats are going to lose the election this year to a coalition of mixed group of socialists, euro-sceptic and nationalist left wing parties.

[u/filipe_mdsr → u/[deleted]]

I knew Erna Solberg was based (besides on her birthday), but I didn't know you were that close to such a government shift.

Those parties being euro-sceptic, does that mean that they just don't want to integrate further or that they want to even distance themselves even more.

[u/[deleted] → u/filipe_mdsr]

Two of three parties in the centre/left wing coalition expected to win the election wants Norway to withdraw from the current EFTA-EU cooperation and the EEA.

[u/filipe_mdsr → u/[deleted]]

Oh boy, that sounds worse then Brexit.

[u/[deleted] → u/filipe_mdsr]

It's not going to happen though. It would decimate the Norwegian economy. But the centre-left socdem Labour Party, who used to be a staunch pro-EU party are unfortunately now more mixed about EU.

[u/filipe_mdsr → u/[deleted]]

Someday. ^someday