“Local Elections 2023: Labor Party Struggles to Hold On Against Conservative Wave”

Jonas Gahr Støre was right. No crisis in the party here.

As you could see.

Shock measurements, personal disputes and power riots were as if blown away.

The Labor Party’s national meeting was not at all the washing-up meeting that one would think, given the state of affairs.

Several conflict cases ended up as compromises, camouflaged in woolen formulations that both sides interpreted as a victory.

In reality, the party leadership gets a lot of leeway.

There was a long time between the self-examinations, which so many had called for.

From the pulpit it was frequently repeated that this country would hardly have been anything without the Labor Party.

It was like hearing people from Trondheim brag about their place in Norwegian history.

That it is by no means a matter of course that social democracy has and will have that position in the future, there was little trace of reflection on in the debate.

Dancing Quee … King

The party got its long-awaited crown prince and crown princess in Jan Christian Vestre and Tonje Brenna.

Jonas Gahr Støre (62) was crowned with record applause and became the king of the dance floor.

But at the prime minister’s energetic “dance on the table” went the limits of the security guards.

The delegates could go home, newly in love with their own party leader.

The same weekend that Charles III (74) got the royal crown on his head.

It’s never too late.

Although it does not necessarily last into eternity.

The day after

Perhaps there was nothing else to expect from an assembly that largely consists of mayors and mayoral candidates.

Everyday life can be abrupt. Not to mention blue.

Because the domino effect that Ap’s support has stuck at a historically low level is really starting to take its toll on the local politicians.

You can regularly read titles such as “Shock measurement from red-green to solid blue” and “Shock measurement: Political earthquake”.

Power can slip in the biggest cities.

In the last election, Høyre and Ap were equal in size in Bergen. The latest measurements are suitable to fill right-wing people with horn music in the chest and bow corps in the heart.

Now the Conservative Party is more than twice as big as the Labor Party in Bergen.

But the fact that the same has happened in Trondheim is a bigger shock. Now it’s even really exciting in the city that no one thought could turn blue again.

In the last five elections, the only tension has been about how many parties Ap has needed to get a majority.

Blue sea as far as you can see

In Kristiansand, the Conservative Party could hardly dream of better numbers, writes Friend of the Fatherland political editor Vidar Udjus.

It does not get better that of Kristiansand is “got trampled on” by party leader and Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre in the much talked about case of splitting up Søgne.

In Ålesund, according to Sunnmørsposten, there is “blue sea as far as you can see”. In the newspaper’s recent party barometer, the Conservative Party and FRP have a clear majority, with a very good margin.

The bourgeois most likely can “jog to election victory”writes political editor Jan Erik Røsvik.

Ap mot Ap

Another city where the Høyre’s mayoral candidate has been told that she might as well play golf as run an election campaign is Stavanger.

The election is decided, it says to read in the newspaper. Even though Aps mayor Kari Nessa Nordtun is in a special position most popular.

In the end, it was the mayors who helped Ap win government power.

Now is payback time where the government must help the mayors win, said party secretary Kjersti Stenseng.

But it is a help that many people can appreciate. There are murmurs that they do not want a visit from the party leader at all.

On the contrary, the strategy is to distance oneself as much as possible from a government that has been branded as historically unpopular.

Kari Nessa Nordtun has two main opponents in this autumn’s election:

Sissel Knutsen Hegdal (H) and Jonas Gahr Støre (Ap), wrote Aftenbladet’s commentator Leif Tore Lindø.

A two-part Norway

In addition, we now see the contours of fairly large regional differences among voters.

The Labor Party holds up better in the north and in traditional core areas outside the big cities.

But especially in Western Norway and along the coast there is a marked blue wave.

It hardly helps that the government has been labeled as unpredictable and not listening to business.

The Labor Party is also losing ground to the Conservative Party in the large cities and municipalities in southern Norway.

The peripheral zone around Oslo also appears to be becoming more blue. For example, Ap in Lillestrøm can lose power after 100 years of government.

In NRK’s ​​latest survey, the Right has doubled in the traditionally red bastion.

Voters as migratory birds

Nor can they count on special support from the Center Party.

Sp has lost 70 percent of voters since 2021, according to Norwegian citizen panel from the University of Bergen.

They hold up best in traditional core areas such as Trøndelag and in scattered areas.

In the big cities, they seem to have lost their grip completely.

Everything indicates that the new voters who stood in the middle of the party when Vedum had seized the protest voters, have abandoned them.

This points to the fact that SP will once again move more in the direction of being a traditional interest party for farmers and rural areas.

In the smaller municipalities, Sp and Ap are very often the main competitors for mayorship.

In the cities, Ap cannot count on Sp to be of as much help to build a majority.

Political fitness

The picture is still not entirely black.

In local elections, there is no such thing as government attrition. On the contrary. Mayors often receive some kind of management allowance and are often re-elected.

They are not rarely the only politician people know. Now Ap and Sp benefit from having the vast majority of mayors in this country.

The smaller the municipality, the greater this effect. Large municipalities are naturally more exposed to national trends.

Labor mayor Gunnar Wilhelmsen can say “look to Tromsø” with a confidence that is not alien to him.

There, Ap increases the lead over the Conservative Party in the recent survey by Nordlys.

But as you know, a swallow doesn’t make a summer.

The Labor Party has a bit of an uphill battle ahead of it if this autumn’s local elections are not to become a blue Monday in the truest sense of the word.

It is the gentlest who win the election, it was said from the pulpit. You haven’t been able to say that about the Labor Party for a while.

So taking a good atmosphere from a national meeting with you is never wrong.

The hope is also that the Conservative Party has been in premature form.

And Støre has, if nothing else, shown that there is nothing wrong with his fitness.