The Scania Riddle: Right Wing Populism and Political Culture in Scania

When studying a political map subsequent to the 2018 Swedish national election one thing in particular catches the eye. The southern parts of Sweden, or the region Scania in particular is dominated by the colour yellow, representing support for the right wing populist party: The Sweden Democrats. The question as to why it looks like this has baffled political scientists and election experts for many years and still does not have an answer. Famous political scientists at the SOM-institute in Gothenburg Henrik Oscarsson and Sören Holmberg describes that the support for the Sweden Democrats in Scania ”is something of a riddle”. In this thesis I am going to make observations about political approaches towards the political system in Scania and political approaches relevant for the voters of the Sweden Democrats. These approaches will create the standing political cultures representative for Scania and for the right wing populist party supporters. The thesis’s main goal is to bring some light on the subject of electorate behaviour within the Scania region and hopefully in some way or another bring something to the table when it comes to research regarding electorate behaviour in Scania. The final results of the thesis came to shed some light on the current situation, the political approaches relevant for the Scania region can be argued to have an influence on the political actions by individuals in Scania. The main conclusion is that when approaches to the political system differs between the main electorate and that of a subculture the political action is to by voting try to reduce the differences in ideals by voting for a party that closer represents a voters own ideals of the political system