Jacob Christensen

On Friday Danmarks Radio’s news magazine Orientering aired the latest in their series of items about the Swedish election. This one covered the small parties but for inscrutable reasons focused on Linda Rosing’s Unika Partiet (a 7 minute interview with BB-list celebrity Rosing) and Piratpartiet which was granted 2 minutes.

To Danes, some aspects of the Swedish system of distributing ballot papers come across as very strange. Each party presents its own paper with a list of candidates, the election authorities only subsidise the distribution of ballot papers for the larger parties and finally ballot papers for the parties are on public display at polling stations. This means that other voters will be able to see if you collect papers for, say, a Radical Socialist party or the Sweden Democrats. Again, this should be to the advantage of established, socially acceptable parties.

Orientering 2006-09-08: Svenske sm�partier (The programme is streamed in Microsoft Media format).

Filed under “note(s) to self”:

• Active learning in large classes
• A whiteboard for each pair of students
• Agressive treatment, agressive teaching

Ok, given the collapse in our student numbers, anything related to “large classes” may be less relevant here in Ume�.

I may as well publish my predicition of the results of the Swedish election that I entered in the sweepstake at my department. Feel free to laugh.

The Left – Social Democrats: 38,5; Left Party: 4,5; Green Party: 4,5.

The Right – Conservatives: 25,0; Liberals: 9,5; Centre Party: 7,0; Christian Democrats: 6,0.

Others – Feminists: 0,5; June List: 1,0; Health Care Party: 0,5; Sweden Democrats: 2,0; Misc: 0,5.

With regard to turn-out, I prediced a miserable 77,5%.

And yes: If you do the math, the left wing gets 47,5% and the right wing 47,5%.

I should note that I entered my prediction before the story that members of the Liberal Party had gained access to the Social Democrats’ intranet broke.