Swedish poll: Almost half of far-right voters consumed "junk news"

***New KANTAR SIFO poll finds 45% of voters for far-right Sweden Democrats consumed news from websites publishing deliberately misleading information***

Modest gains by Sweden's far right were driven by the issue of immigration and an increasing use of “junk news”, a new KANTAR SIFO poll, conducted over the weekend, has shown. 

Junk news is defined by Oxford University as sources deliberately publishing misleading, deceptive or incorrect information purporting to be real news about politics, economics or culture - most with a right-wing focus on immigration and Islam.

The poll found that Sweden Democrat voters were more likely than the general public to have heard negative news stories about immigrants, and 95% of them said immigration played a major role in their voting decision. More than a third would have “preferred” to vote for a different party, had immigration not been an issue.

The key results:

• 45 percent of Sweden Democrat voters say they have consumed news from the Sweden’s top three “junk news” websites on social media during the last year, which are publishing deliberately misleading information according to a report by Oxford University. This compares to 27 percent of the general public.

• 95 percent of Sweden Democrat voters said that immigration played a “very large” or “pretty big” role in their voting decision. 36% would have “preferred” to vote for a different party, had immigration not been an issue.

• 84 percent of Sweden Democrat voters reported hearing a lot of news about immigrants committing crimes or other bad acts. This compares to 72 percent of the general public.

Christoph Schott, Campaign Director at Avaaz, said:
“Sweden’s far-right took a page from Putin’s playbook by flooding voters with fake and manipulative news about immigration. But it didn’t work -- predictions of huge gains for the far-right evaporated, and they only managed to come third. Like in the US, the far right is not rising, they’re lying.”

The KANTAR SIFO poll comes on the back of an Oxford University study, finding that one-third of Swedish election-related articles shared online came from “junk news” websites, mostly with a right-wing focus on immigration and Islam. According to Oxford, these are figures comparable to their findings from the US elections in 2016. The biggest three sources, according to Oxford, are Samhällsnytt, Nyheter idag and Fria tider. 

One example was a story on Samshällsnytt, about a youth soccer tournament that banned pork as forbidden under Islamic law - when it was only for practical reasons that the caterer had not served pork, and there was no ban against it. 

Last week, Sweden’s Defence Research Agency said that the number of twitter bots doubled ahead of the elections and were 40% more likely to express support for the Sweden Democrats than genuine accounts.

Contacts:
Rene Engel: +49 151 6512 8526, rene@avaaz.org 
Avaaz Media team: +1 415 217 9392 media@avaaz.org

Find more detailed poll results here. Full poll results and methodology are available upon request.

ENDS