ABSTRACT
This chapter explains that right-wing political populism now appears to be firmly established in the Swedish political landscape; another is that some evidence suggests that the interplay between media coverage and opinion polls might help explain the more recent success of the Sweden Democrats. The Sweden Democrats formed in 1988 out of three connected and overlapping nationalist, racist, and anti-immigration political parties and organizations: The Sweden party, Keep Sweden Swedish (BSS), and the Progress party. In public debates, the term tends to be associated with political opportunism, offering simple solutions to complex problems and antagonistic, black-and-white rhetoric. Early research on political populism in Sweden focused on the suppliers of populism New Democracy and the Sweden Democrats as well as the weak demand for populism. Compared to research on populist actors as communicators, there is more systematic research on media and populism in Sweden, although it focuses almost exclusively on the Sweden Democrats rather than on political populism in general.
