KrF may be affected by a new match

The new Sentrum party may send KrF below the threshold in next year’s parliamentary elections.

There has been great tension over whether KrF members who left the party after the party path choice in 2018 wanted a new party.

The election of the KrF leadership ended when the party chose to cooperate with the right wing and join the Solberg government.

On Tuesday the news broke that put Norwegian politics to bed: former Oslo Labor councilor Geir Lippestad and several former “red” members of the KrF form the Sentrum party.

At the same time, there are no “big shots” among the former “red” members of KrF who support the project. Former Prime Minister and KrF leader Kjell Magne Bondevik tells VG that he does not support the formation of the party of which his son John Harald Bondevik is one of the initiators.

Kristin Walstad, until recently Deputy Leader of Viken KrF, Dag Sele, former Leader of Hordaland KrF County and Irene Solli, former Deputy Leader of Agder KrF, are among the most prominent.

Odd Anders With, who was active at KrF nearly 20 years ago (former secretary of state and second vice president 1999-2003), has signed up, writes Adresseavisen. The same has been done by two former KrF communication advisers, Dag Fedøy and Gunnhild Sørås.

The party needs 5000 signatures to be approved in the Norwegian Party Register. Walstad, who is a press spokesperson, tells Aftenposten that Sentrum has gained around 50 members in the first day after the project was made public.

Aardal: KrF can be hit hard

Election researcher Bernt Aardal believes that KrF could be greatly affected if the Center succeeds in establishing itself as a party.

He says that it may appear that Sentrum is designed to capture Red KrF members who in 2018 wanted to cooperate with the left, with the Labor Party and the Socialist People’s Party.

Aardal says it remains to be seen how the Center will shape itself on social democratic and / or Christian values.

– Lippestad has so far emphasized social democratic values, at the same time that there are several former members of KrF on the board. This means that the party can steal voters from both the Labor Party, the Socialist People’s Party, the MDGs, and the Christian Democrats.

– But it doesn’t matter: KrF is the one with the least ahead. The party has a record support from before and will be greatly affected. Even small transitions from KrF to other parts can have a big impact.

At the same time, Aardal says that Sentrum has a long way to go to enter the Storting.

– There is less than a year left for the elections. At that point, they should get an “acute” case, a case that can separate the party from other parties. The vignettes that have been discussed so far are subjects on which many parties agree, it will not be easy to be the alternative of a moderate center, at the same time that the party must acquire a distinctive character.

120 votes below threshold

The also expert in opinion polls, Johan Giertsen, says that KrF lives dangerously. He believes that the party is very vulnerable to competition. He runs the Poll of Polls website.

KrF has been below the four percent barrier limit on average from all measurements throughout 2020, according to pollofpolls.no.

To illustrate how vulnerable KrF is, Giertsen has made a calculation of how KrF’s support would have turned out in the 2019 municipal elections had there been parliamentary elections. He did it for Vårt Land earlier this year.

The calculation shows that KrF would have received a support of 3.99955 percent and it lacked 120 poor votes to overcome the limit of the barrier.

– Given the support of KrF in 2019, the party may be closer to the threshold than the weaker polls give the impression, Giertsen tells Aftenposten.

Parties that receive more than four percent support receive equalizing mandates in addition to district mandates.

Today, five of the eight KrF parliamentary representatives have equalizing mandates.

– Hareide could have faced this.

– The calculation must be taken with a pinch of salt because the municipal elections are not parliamentary elections at all, and there is a greater turnout in the parliamentary elections.

Giertsen believes, however, that the calculation illustrates the degree of KrF’s exposure to competition from other parties.

– But KrF’s most important asset is loyalty. Therefore, it is not easy to predict how this will turn out.

However, Giertsen is skeptical about whether Sentrum manages to establish itself as a political party of a certain size over time.

– It is very difficult to establish a new party. Look at the result of the 1945 elections. The party’s flora is not very different from the current situation.

He also believes that the Center should have more “national sizes” to boast of than Geir Lippestad, if the party wants to stock up on voters.

– The most prominent politician who could head this project is called Knut Arild Hareide, but he is a minister in the same government as KrF leader Ropstad and must campaign alongside Ropstad, says Giertsen.

Lunde: Not much of a threat to KrF

Erik Lunde, a member of the central board of KrF and on the red side of KrF in 2018, says that the party has the ambition to exceed the threshold next year.

– And I don’t see the Center as a great threat. They have a long way to go. The party also does not have a platform that is as focused as its name implies.

Lunde points out that many Red KrF members on Tuesday came out and called KrF.

– I believe that the formation of a new party that takes advantage of KrF’s distancing and criticizes KrF can also have a mobilizing effect on the Red members of KrF.

However, Lunde says that small new parties can harm established parties.

– In 2015, Oslo KrF lacked 33 votes to bring in the second city council representative. At the same time, the Christian Party received a few hundred votes.