Sweden’s Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries Eskil Erlandsson emerged as a surprising hair-breadth second in voter popularity in the national elections on 19 September, narrowly beaten only by Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt.
Sweden has had a system in the last four elections where voters may check a candidate of choice on the party ballots, giving that person a better position in the party’s ranking.
Out of all voters who had written in such personal preference for a candidate this year who was also a cabinet minister, 24.76 percent had checked Reinfeldt, while 24.31 had expressed such special sympathy for Erlandsson.
As a comparison, the minister who gathered the smallest number of personal ballots, Trade Minister Ewa Björling, had a sad 0.14 percent.
The jovial Erlandsson, who had not campaigned for his own candidacy, did not explain his success with a sudden interest in the electorate for sieve mesh sizes or CFP reform, but rather his strong personal political basis in the province of Kronoberg, otherwise associated with writer Astrid Lindgren for most Swedes.
“After all, I was the mayor of Ljungby for twelve years”, he pointed out.