Ahead of the 2026 election, trade unions, civil society, and human rights organizations appealed to Swedish politicians for a more respectful, fact-based debate. It remains to be seen how the 2026 campaign was received by voters and how it will affect Sweden’s political climate.

More broadly, polarization and disinformation are associated with reduced quality of the political debate. Polls after Sweden’s 2022 election point in a similar direction: 40 percent of voters described the campaign as lacking or severely lacking in factual, issue-focused debate.

There have also been accounts of political parties disseminating false information, such as in 2023, when the far-right Sweden Democrats, whose parliamentary support the government relies on, were exposed for using troll accounts to mass-produce misleading information and attack other politicians.

Looking at some concrete examples from the media, in recent years, hate speech from political parties may have included targeting minorities, using degrading language for political opponents, or calling protesters “beasts”.

While the decline in the three indicators is still relatively modest, research shows that, if sustained, these developments mutually reinforce each other and can contribute to gradual democratic backsliding by eroding trust in core democratic institutions.

A score of 3 still means hate speech and disinformation occur rarely. A score of 2 for polarization means differences in opinion are noticeable on about half of key issues, causing some clashes.

The graph shows a gradual increase in political parties’ hate speech, disinformation, and societal polarization over the last 15 years. Lower scores indicate more frequent hate speech and disinformation, and more severe polarization.

Sweden’s ranking on the V-Dem Liberal Democracy Index remains one of the highest worldwide and while experts note that that Swedish democracy is not under direct threat, some point to trends worth monitoring.

In a series of posts, we will go through each of the 5 principles and the V-Dem indices that represent them. But V-Dem does not only measure those 5 principles. The V-Dem data includes hundreds of indicators and many other interesting indices, as well as variables that are not part of any index.

Each of these principles represents a different way of understanding “rule by the people.” So while no single principle captures all the meanings of democracy, taken together, these principles provide a fairly complete picture of how the concept is understood today.