Personal question: How should I choose the party/person to vote for in the upcoming 🇪🇺 EU election?
As someone who’s been living for 9 years in the EU, I like to use my first opportunity to vote smart. I always posted about professional and career topics, but this time, given how powerful EU’s regulations are, from GDPR, DSA, and recently the AI Act, and how extreme policies some parties are discussing, not to mention the life-changing EU scholarship (EIT - European Institute of Innovation and Technology) that I received to study in top universities, I’d like to choose my vote in a calculated way.
This is not special for Sweden or even the EU. I wonder, as someone who is living in the digital age of 2024, with unlimited information access, is there a guide to choose who to vote for rationally? (I wish Tim Urban writing a piece on this, after the "What is our problem" book).
At the moment, we vote the same way as we choose which movie to watch in the late evening. We watch some trailers (mottos), check the genres (left/center/right), and, depending on our mood, choose one.
Luckily in Sweden, we have an Election Compass (Valkompas) where you can answer a list of questions and see what each party is thinking for every question. While this is very helpful, I see these main issues with it:
1️⃣ You rarely fully agree with any party, so you get a list of matching of 70% Party A, 65% Party B, … on different topics. So you still need to choose.
2️⃣ Choosing answers to the questions is not always easy. While you can see arguments for the party’s choice on each question, it’s not enough to form an opinion.
3️⃣ There should be much more than just 20-25 questions that identify a party (otherwise I won’t be surprised if we replace politicians with Agents 🫢)
Now I feel I need a QuickStart guide for what each party is envisioning for Sweden and the EU. Going over the websites of major parties only resulted in a list of mottos that I already saw on the street. As someone with slightly “fresh eyes”, how should I do due diligence with the parties and the promises they are making? What resources are available to read and learn about the parties (like their manifesto or similar)?
Repost from a LinkedIn post as I want to explore this topic more in upcoming posts.