Residents in vulnerable areas report more election pressure

Residents of areas classified as vulnerable are more likely than people elsewhere in Sweden to report pressure over how they vote, according to a new survey by Järvaveckan Research and Indikator Opinion, reported by SVT.

Just over one in four residents in vulnerable areas said it was not accepted in their neighbourhood to vote differently from family and friends. In the rest of Sweden, around 15 percent said the same. However, a majority in both groups said voting differently was entirely or partly accepted.

Nine percent of respondents in vulnerable areas said they had personally faced pressure to vote for a particular party or candidate, compared with four percent elsewhere in Sweden.

“It is important that we talk with these groups rather than about them,” said Ahmed Abdirahman, chief executive of the Järvaveckan Foundation. He said the survey does not establish why respondents gave their answers and that the issue should be studied further rather than speculated about.

Abdirahman said the findings report survey responses and should not be used to draw conclusions about individual groups. He added that people he had spoken to in the suburbs wanted such research to help prevent generalisations based on prejudice rather than facts.

Response rates were 15 percent among people in vulnerable areas and 49 percent in the rest of Sweden. Per Oleskog Tryggvason, head of opinion research at Indikator Opinion, said reaching people in vulnerable areas presents significant challenges. He said the survey randomly selected residents from the population register to ensure respondents lived in those areas.

People in vulnerable areas were invited through Kivra, while participants representing the rest of Sweden came from Indikator Opinion’s randomly recruited panel. The survey was offered in Swedish, English and Arabic. Indikator weighted responses by gender, age and how respondents voted in the parliamentary election, aiming to make the respondent group representative of those who did not take part.