Who gets Elected? Radical Right Party Candidates in Sweden between 1990 and 2012

This paper seeks to examine what makes radical right wing candidates electable and which traits are most important for their selection in different types of elections and at different development stage of the party itself. For many years, Sweden has been a 'blank space' for anti-immigration parties. In recent years, Sweden joined other Western European countries with significant support for radical right wing politics. Within the last decade, a small extremist party called Sverigedemokraterna (Sweden Democrats, SD) came out from political wilderness, becoming the second most popular party in polls (towards the end of 2016 the party polled at 22%) and attracting nearly 10,000 members. Limited attention has been devoted to the key aspect supply side dimension of the party success – its candidates. We propose to examine data on nearly 6,000 SD candidates running for political offices in Sweden in elections held between 1990 and 2012 (for four types of elections: national legislative body, municipal assemblies, county councils and European Parliament). With unique Swedish data, we are able to determine individual characteristics (including leadership potential and IQ score measured for men) and see how these traits affect probability of being elected. These results can then be compared with other parties.