Some Problems of Change in the Swedish Electorate.

This paper explores two related problems, which have grown out of a concern with dynamic aspects of Swedish voting behavior. In trying to apply a model of voting behavior primarily designed to analyze American data to the Swedish multiparty system have raised some descriptive questions, which at least partly can be answered on the basis of some recent survey work in Sweden. The first topic concerns the relationship between social mobility and political preference. The Center Party has traditionally had its strongest support among the farmers and other rural voters but has lately made some inroads among urban voters. Now there is in Sweden, as in other industrial nations, a fair amount of intergenerational mobility. The white collar class has been growing fast during the last decades and can be expected to grow further. Many members of the new middle class come from homes where the father was a worker. These upwardly mobile people have a Socialist heritage but now belong to a class where the norm is rather anti-Socialistic.