Eight model voters and their views on Swedish society : A critical discourse analysis of the 2018 election manifestos of the political parties in the Swedish Parliament.

This study examines the introductory texts in the 2018 election manifestos of the eight political parties represented in the Swedish parliament, with the aim of comparing the different views of Swedish society expressed in the texts. The idea that the public political debate in Sweden in recent years have been focused on individual issues rather than ideology forms a starting point for the study. The analysis is based on the term model voter, which is a way of adapting the notion of the so-called model reader to fit this specific study. Critical discourse analysis is used as a theoretical framework, and is discussed in relation to political ideologies and presupposed information in texts. The analysis takes a qualitative approach, in identifying how prominent key words, visual elements and rhetoric patterns are used to persuade the model voter of the party’s message. The model voter is viewed as a representation of each party’s ideology and values, and the different views on Swedish society are described through the eyes of the model voter. The results show that the model voter appears in the texts with a varying degree of clarity, and that they all have characteristics in common as well as characteristics that set them apart. The study concludes that all the model voters see some kind of threat to the development of the Swedish society, but the origin of these threats vary depending on the political party in question. The different natures of these threats are closely connected to the ideology of each party. The study also discusses its results related to the tendency of some election platforms to exclude certain groups of voters in their texts, based on the values and opinions that the model voter is presumed to share with its political party