NEWS ANALYSIS: Norway’s Labour-Center government, led by Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, is still struggling in public opinion polls as the new parliamentary years begins. The campaign for next year’s national election is already unofficially underway, and Støre’s government seems more unpopular than ever.
Støre’s Labour Party only held 20.2 percent of the vote in the most recent public opinion poll released last week. That compared to the Conservatives’ 25.5 percent. What’s worse for Støre is the very poor showing of his government partner, the Center Party. It only won 5.1 percent of the vote in the poll conducted by research firm Norstat for newspaper Aftenposten and state broadcaster NRK. That’s down from 13.5 percent in the 2021 election.
The poor poll numbers mean Labour and Center now have less voter support together than the Conservatives have alone, while the Conservatives’ most likely coalition partner, the even-more-conservative Progress Party, holds 19.5 percent. Støre’s Labour and Center won government power in 2021 with just 39.8 percent of the vote. Former prime minister Erna Solberg’s Conservatives and Sylvi Listhaug’s Progress currently have 45 percent.
If the non-socialist Liberal Party (with 4.8 percent) also joins Solberg’s team again, they’d have nearly 50 percent and a clear majority of seats in Parliament, even more if the troubled Christian Democrats manage to retain at least some.
The standings have set off new calls even within Labour that the current situation isn’t just a crisis for the party, but an alleged “catastrophe,” reported newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) already last spring. Some, according to DN, also think Støre should dump the protectionist Center Party as Labour’s partner (they especially have clashes over EU-related issues and all the support Center want to deliver to the districts instead of to Norwegian cities) and either go it alone or team up with the resurgent Socialist Left Party (SV). Its 8.4 percent in the polls could also help them unite and revive the left side of Norwegian politics, since the Reds have 5 percent and the Greens, which governed with Labour in Oslo for two terms, have 4 percent.
The Reds’ new leader, Marie Sneve Martinussen, has impressed many with her eloquence and ability to take over and carry on after former leader Bjørnar Moxnes got into trouble for shoplifting and also now risks losing his seat in Parliament. Martinussen quickly took control and told Aftenposten just last week that “both Labour and Center need to wake up. They won’t get a majority without us.” Given how Center has shrunk, she doesn’t see any chance for the left side of politics to prevail: “A majority on the left side must rely on a big and strong Reds Party.”
There’s no question, though, that the political winds in Norway have taken a sharp turn to the right, as they also have over much of Europe. Young Norwegian men are voting conservative as are many young voters in general. They’ve grown up with Norway’s affluence and underlying oil wealth, note several election analysts, and may no longer appreciate the benefits of the welfare state.
“The numbers show a blue (conservative in Norway) wave among voters,” wrote Kjetil B Alstadheim, political editor in Aftenposten, after the latest poll results emerged. “The Conservatives are moving forward, so is Progress and now breathing down their neck.” That continues a trend that shows dissatisfied voters fleeing from both Center and Labour to the other side.
Another recent survey showed that Norwegians’ confidence in their government fell 16 percentage points from 2021 (when Erna Solberg’s Conservatives were ending their second term in office) to 2023 (two years after Støre’s Labour took over). That’s the biggest decline among the 18 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). It’s still high, reported news bureau NTB, with 48 percent of Norwegians claiming they had high or moderately high confidence in their government (the average among OECD countries is 39 percent). The results, however, were down from 64 percent in 2021, when the last national election was held.
Støre still claims it’s “fully possible for us to win” next September’s election, especially since “we are at a turning point in the economy,” as King Harald read in the government’s declaration at the opening of Parliament. “The government’s goal,” he added, is for Norwegians to have better household economy after the past few years of relatively high inflation, interest rates and utility rates.
Both Støre and his finance minister, Center Party leader Trygve Slagsvold Vedum, are promoting economic issues at every turn. They promised “jobs for everyone” during the 2021 campaign and that’s largely been fulfilled. Norway not only has low unemployment, it has a labour shortage in many fields, not least within health care.
After imposing lots of unpopular new taxes and raising existing ones for many, they’re also vowing “secure economic management” and efforts to boost purchasing power. In their upcoming state budget proposal next week, they’re hinting at lower wealth tax “for most folks,” and other “adjustments” that can take the sting out of some of their earlier taxes. That can include raising the deductibles on the basis for some taxes. They’re also promising young voters that it should become easier to buy a home: Norway’s central bank has already proposed lowering the minimum down-payment demands on home purchases this week, from 15- to 10 percent.
Støre and Vedum also are reversing a much-hated “extraordinary” tax they imposed on employers from 2023, to help “secure the costs of welfare” programs and make up for the costs of aid to Ukraine and electricity subsidies when rates soared in 2022. The question is whether employers who were shocked by the higher taxes will forgive Støre’s government, or trust them agaiin.
The Labour-Center campaign also includes promises “to reach our climate goals” (even though Norway is still lagging far behind at present), to fight crime and continue to boost defense spending and preparedness. Labour has even sent some of its ministers to Denmark to study how it has cracked down on immigration, an issue long promoted by the right-wing Progress Party. Labour may thus resort to tougher immigration and asylum policy as a means of winnig more voters. Asylum policy has already been become stricter, with cutbacks in benefits and new limits on arrivals even from Ukraine.
Some point to Støre himself as the problem for Labour, arguing that he’s not a credible leader of a party rooted in the working class because the highly educated Støre is from an affluent family and specialized in foreign policy, not labour issues. Støre’s choice of a deputy leader and possible successor, Jan Christian Vestre, has also been criticized since Vestre is also from an entrepreneurial family and, like Støre, has a relatively large private fortune.
Another problem, meanwhile, is simply that Norway no longer has the labourers to whom Labour catered. Much of the labour force in the trades and industry are workers from the former Eastern Europe or other areas who don’t vote in Norway, or if they did, may vote for more right-wing parties.
At least many of the personnel problems that Støre had (with wayward ministers who got into trouble) have settled down. He’s now had a more stable government for at least the past few months.
Commentators including Jo Moen Bredeveien in newspaper Dagsavisen, meanwhile, think a Center Party desperate to win back voters, though, may become even “noiser” and more aggressive as the election approaches. That can include more pitting of urban needs against rural, Norwegian needs and desires at home against the need for international alliances, and pushing more symbolic causes similar to how Center was behind the reopening police stations and local courts that neither the police nor the court system wanted. That has backfired badly.
Commentator Alstadheim has suggested that Center Party is simply out of touch with the vast majority of voters in Norway, also in rural Norway. Nor is Center’s strong opposition to the EU and European Economic Area as popular or appealing as it once was: Voters have seen a need for international alliances during the Corona crisis, the energy crisis and, not least, since Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Støre’s political career, meanwhile, has been quite different from the pursuits of his own immediate family members. His wife, a pastor and gestalt therapist, rarely accompanies Støre in public and his oldest son, 34-year-old Magnus Jonas Slagsvold Støre, has stated on social media that he doesn’t think politics are the solution to the problems of society. Newspaper Aftenposten reported last spring on how the young Støre dropped out of psychology studies 11 years ago, recently moved to a farm outside of Oslo with his wife and two children, calls himself a “spiritual leader” and breathing therapist, and promotes the value of simply sitting quietly outside in the nature.
“I think many of the great challenges today are rooted in something inside the person,” Slagsvold Støre told Aftenposten. “It’s about feelings and how we view the world. Peace in Gaza doesn’t come out of signing a peace treaty, we must also understand how we can solve traumas that have existed for generations.” Politics, he claimed, can try to find solutions for what people care about, while he urges “trying new ways to understand ourselves and our place in the world.”
Asked what it’s like for him to have a father who’s prime minister and works with politics most of the day, Slagsvold Støre said that was fine. “Both my father and I work for the world to be a better place to live … each from our side of the spectrum. He works at the highest meta level, I work with each heart. Both are needed.”
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund