Research project Which parties have regional strongholds, where are these located and how are they expressed in citizens' political values and actions? This project is a systematic and comprehensive analysis of regional political cultures and political regions in Sweden 1948-2022 and provides completely new knowledge about the regional dimension of Swedish politics.
The project aims to analyse the occurrence, development and content of regional political cultures in Sweden during the period 1948-2022. These are clusters of neighbouring municipalities where a party consistently performs significantly better election results than could be expected based on the prevailing structural conditions. The territory of the political culture constitutes a political region. The occurrence of political regions in Sweden has not been analysed since 1979 and the content of regional political cultures has never before been systematically investigated.
The project aims to analyse the occurrence, development and content of regional political cultures in Sweden during the period 1948-2022. A regional political culture is a cluster of neighbouring municipalities where a party consistently performs significantly better election results than can be expected based on the prevailing structural conditions. The territory of the political culture is a political region.
The occurrence and development of the political regions is analysed using a unique municipal database with information about the existing Swedish municipalities under the whole period of analysis. The findings indicate that there have been about twenty political regions and that all parliamentary parties, apart from the Environmental Party, have or have had such regionally based strongholds.
The next stage is to analyse which groups of sympathizers the dominant party is particularly able to mobilize; what impact the dominant party's political values have; and what impact this party has on how people are active in politics and civil society in the political region. To varying extents, the regional political cultures leave their marks not only among the dominant party's own sympathizers but also on those who support other parties. For these analyses, data from the national SOM survey 1986-2022 is used, with a total of approximately 180,000 randomly selected individuals. This may be used for regional analyses as the respondents' municipality of residence is known.
The project contributes completely new knowledge about regional aspects of Swedish politics. The occurrence of political regions in Sweden has not been analysed since 1979 and the content of these cultures has never before been systematically investigated. Results from the project will be reported continuously, primarily as working papers and later also in book form.
Lidström, Anders, 2025. Sverigedemokraternas regionala politiska kultur i Skåne och Blekinge. Vad ligger bakom partiets exceptionella regionala framgångar? Umeå Working Papers in Political Science, 2025:1 (with summary in English)
