This essay sets out to describe the changes of social class distribution and the meaning of class in the electorate of the Swedish social democrats from the start of the second half of the 20th century until today. The purpose is to see if a traditional political left/right perspective is still a relevant way of seeing and describing the electorate of the Swedish social democrats.
The method chosen to answer this question is a statistical class analysis which is applied on Swedish election studies from 1964-2010. This essay differentiates between objective class and subjective class. Objective class is based on a division of occupation while subjective class is based the individual class experience.
The essay concludes that changes have indeed occurred in both class distribution and in the meaning of class for the electorate of the Swedish social democrats. The traditional left/right perspective is still valid and class has still a part to play in explaining the voting behaviour of the Swedish social democrats electorate. But its validity of the traditional left/right perspective and the explanatory power has weakened during the last 50 years, which suggests that other political perspectives is needed today to more fully understand both the electorate of the Swedish social democrats and the Swedish electorate as a whole.