Örebro Party seeks parliament seat through electoral backdoor

Örebro Party leader Markus Allard is seeking a seat in the Swedish parliament through what he calls a “backdoor” route, while continuing to draw attention for his confrontational political style, SVT reports.

“If I happen to get a kingmaker role, things will get lively,” Allard says as SVT follows him during the election campaign in Örebro.

Allard becomes angry at the start of an interview with SVT at Örebro City Hall after noticing that Dagens ETC, which had not been granted an interview, is also waiting for him in the reception area.

“Did you come together?” he asks before calming down when he learns that the two media outlets did not.

Although politicians sometimes lose their tempers in council chambers, few swear at and insult their opponents in the way Allard does. His style has made him nationally known, but has also left him on poor terms with almost all the other parties in Örebro, where he serves on both the municipal and regional councils.

“The language you use in your damn narrow-minded SVT corridors in Stockholm is different from how people talk in construction site break rooms. Of course there is a difference. You belong to the establishment. You are a minority, and people speak differently. I think these clips go viral for a reason,” Allard tells SVT.

Sweden is divided into 29 constituencies in parliamentary elections. Under the 12 percent rule, a party that receives at least 12 percent of the vote in a single constituency can take part in distributing the fixed seats there.

No party has ever entered parliament through this route. In 1988, however, Alf Svensson of the Christian Democrats came close after the party received 10.8 percent in Jönköping County.

In SVT and Verian’s latest opinion polls ahead of the parliamentary election, the category of “other parties” is overrepresented in Örebro County, although it is not certain that all those voters would support the Örebro Party. The figure fluctuated between 3.5 and 6 percent from May to August.

About 2 percent of voters in the Örebro County constituency supported the Örebro Party in the 2022 parliamentary election. A Novus and Nerikes Allehanda poll in May indicated that the party would be the second-largest in Örebro Municipality if an election were held at that time.