Churches have elections?

The Local.se

The Church of Sweden held an election for its General Synod on Sunday. Since the Church of Sweden was (or is, I forget) part of the government, these elections are highly political and all major political parties run candidates alongside parties that only exist within the Church. Anyone that that is a member of the Church of Sweden, which is most of Sweden, can vote. However, only 12% did so.

In a follow-up article they mention big gains made by anti-gay marriage groups. Sweden recently approved of gay marriage, with the Christian Democrats being the only dissenting party within the Riksdag. I was going to put up a post about how this would seem an obvious result given that voters in a General Synod election with such low turn-out would tend to be conservative and focused on recent controversies. However, a look at the full results reveals something else. All left-wing parties also increased their share of the vote. The only parties to lose seats were the center-right parties. So anti-gay groups made gains, but so did leftist, pro-gay groups.

Could it be a sign that Swedish politics are becoming more polarized? Actually, probably not. Sweden is a social democratic country, so any gains made by the Social Democrats is probably a move back towards the center. While there was movement towards the right within the right, they still shrunk overall.