The best determination of classic human vices and phenomena is found, as so often, in antiquity. Specifically in Aesop's animal fables. The most obvious, of course, is the one about the hare and the tortoise, with an outcome that everyone knows. The swift hare takes victory for granted, but the tortoise perseveres tirelessly and takes home the race in the end. Just in time for election day, the Swedish Academy published a new book with these classic stories, including a version written by the author Tora Dahl in 1959. The turtle is here replaced by a snail, but the result is the same. The self-proclaimed victor suffers from hubris and has to bite the grass.
It was not without thinking about that fable during Sunday. Election day as usual very beautiful and peaceful, a clear crispness in the air, the first red leaves that curled up at the curbs of the sidewalks. Like many Swedish citizens, we met old friends and acquaintances, parents of those who just now - it feels like - were little single drinkers but who now for the first time got to cast their vote in democracy's main trophy.
The words had a special resonance for many on this election day in Sweden 2026, the election that for so long seemed to be decided
But it was also easy to think of Italo Calvino's short story "Diary of an Electoral Officer", which is about the experiences of the electoral officer Amerigo Ormea during a day in Turin in 1953. When the people enter the polling station, Calvino's electoral officer sees how it is as if "democracy appeared before the citizens in this modest, gray, unadorned dress" - the procedures of the polling station become "an inexorable victory over the Fascists, over all those who had believed that they could despise democracy precisely for its external desolation.”
The words had a special resonance for many on this election day in Sweden 2026, the election that for so long seemed to be decided but which now seems to end mainly in a loss for everyone involved but perhaps mainly for the party that in practice ruled and ruled in Swedish politics during the last four years - a party founded by, among others, Nazi veterans, fascists and open racists and which was recently shown to harbor Russian infiltrators, a party whose leader in the last televised debate took taking the opportunity to blame the upcoming election results on Swedish Muslims, who in a Faustian pact have brought both liberal and conservative parties into a moral spiral towards the bottom.
Now this party backs down for the first time in a parliamentary election, and its grinning triumphant march through Swedish politics in recent years seems to be broken. But the feeling that many experienced at the beginning of election night as an existential relief was soon replaced by despair and nervous tension.
What lingers is the sense of a lost opportunity. A lost opportunity to once and for all declare the Tidö collaboration dead and once again put the gold reserve of Swedish humanism into the day. A lost opportunity to restore both the guardrails of democracy and the safety of all the teenagers and other immigrants who have long since established themselves in Sweden and who now support our country. A lost opportunity – to borrow the Sweden Democrats' own slogan – to make Sweden Sweden again.
The lost opportunity must be written to a large extent on the account of the Social Democrats. The party is making its worst choice since universal suffrage was introduced, and for completely understandable reasons. The old Labor Party has so far forgotten its legendary party leader Olof Palme's motto that politics is about wanting. On the contrary, they have tried to show that they want as little as possible, as if they have internalized the criticism of the lashing right even before it is uttered.
We know what can happen now - and that regardless of what happens. If the results of the election night stand, this damaged party will try under almost impossible circumstances to form a government with recalcitrant and mutually incompatible companions. If this maneuver fails - or if the numbers swing again - the unholy constellation between liberals and ethno-nationalists from Tidö Castle is ready to take over once again. The development is outlined in the concept document Tidö 2.0, which according to the American model will function as a manual in the government office where the Sweden Democrats will take their place in that case. The resistance of the traditional bourgeois parties to SD's illiberal tendencies has – in accordance with all historical patterns – proven negligible.
Swedish democracy will survive
As a consolation for all the losers in 2026's Swedish election, however, Tora Dahl's version of Aesop's famous animal story also has a continuation, a kind of epilogue to the fable of the race. While the snail celebrates his triumph with the rest of the forest animals, the hare retreats to lick his wounds. In this way, he rediscovers his kindred and with them also his true identity.
Sensmoralen is worth pondering for all those who have lost their soul in Swedish politics in recent years.
Democracy will survive.
We create it together.
Maybe it can finally make us feel life in us.
