This is the last chance for Kjell-Ingolf Ropstad

Everything points against KrF. If Ropstad leaves the Storting, his time as party leader may be over.

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Last week Two important things happened for the Christian Popular Party: They presented the draft of a new party program. And a new poll by NRK and Aftenposten showed that they would completely exit the Storting if there were elections now.

After the important debate on the choice of roads in the fall of 2018, KrF has been below the barrier limit in the average of the measurements. It is not far from the magic four. The only problem is, no matter what KrF does, it doesn’t seem to help.

Kjell-Ingolf Ropstad he became party leader more or less against his will when Knut Arild Hareide resigned. It led the party in a direction that many, including myself, thought it was the voters who should pick up: on the bourgeois side. It turned out not to vote.

Now Ropstad himself is in danger of falling outside the Storting, despite being nominated at the top in both Aust and Vest-Agder. It showed an impact measurement at Fædrelandsvennen in October.

It is a disaster for KrF if the party leader falls from the Storting, and especially if it is because the Bible belt has turned its back on him. If that happens, he will hardly sit as the leader of KrF for long.

In recent years There has been a long way between the actual winning cases at KrF. The party has received much criticism, also from people close to the party, for choosing profile cases in which there are few new voters to pick up.

Those voters who want women to be required to have a 48-hour reflection time before they are allowed to have an abortion are likely to vote primarily for KrF from before. The lawsuit was a presentation on the previous KrF show, but was rejected after massive criticism.

For comparison: Have you heard the Center Party talk a lot about agriculture lately? Not quite. They know they have the support of farmers no matter what, and rather prioritize broader centralization issues. Gather much more.

The new party program a KrF also does not point to any case in which there are voters. There seems to be a slight modernization of the party’s politics, but it is not easy to understand what the electoral campaign issues will be.

Only in the press release about the program is the word “continue” used four times. It doesn’t exactly speak of a new breath in politics.

Furthermore, the party struggles with a culture in which one cannot distance oneself from the old loss cases. On issues like gay rights, the liberalization of the Biotechnology Law, and the right to abortion, KrF has always been on the restrictive line.

I KrF Many hoped that this spring’s debate on liberalizing biotech regulations would give the party a boost at the polls. But voters never flock to a party that loses after losing at the Storting.

There are many parties that have tried to say “we fight to the end”, but it is useless to cultivate their defeats. Ask SV. Or Frp. Or to the left.

Instead, these problems persist in the party. The party’s leader, Kjell-Ingolf Ropstad, became heavily involved in the battle for biotechnology. Thus, he manages to hang the loser stamp.

Such matters He also has to awaken the painful battle of choice of path that runs the whole of Knut Arild Hareide. Each case of the conservative type leads to a meta-debate in and around KrF on whether this is the right way to go.

The divided party means that they will never have peace of mind.

The number of members in KrF is in free fall: from 2017 to 2019, the number went from 26,000 to 20,000. If we go back 15 years in time, KrF had over 40,000 members.

For those of us who like to read a little annual report by the bedside, there is no doubt that the members have taken the road. It doesn’t help with many party activists in the afterlife.

And the same goes for voters. When we talk about opinion polls, we often use the term “loyalty.” This is a large proportion of those who voted for the party in the last elections, who say they will do so again.

KrF traditionally high loyalty, but does not help:

In 2017, KrF received twice the support in the group for 80 years than among voters under 66. In other words, high loyalty is not enough: a fairly large proportion of those who voted KrF last have probably dropped out for so-called natural reasons.

And there is little indication that KrF is managing to attract new voters. Surveys indicate that those who were tempted by KrF’s family policy had finished raising a family themselves several decades ago.

The two micro-parties Sentrum and the Christian Party seem to make the situation worse. KrF needs all the votes it can get.

I add it is an almost perfect storm, where everything seems to fail at the same time. Ropstad has ten months to solve a problem to which it has not found an answer in the last two years. The clock is ticking.