Now at 11 o’clock, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre will give his half-yearly summary of the political autumn. The backdrop is a government that has almost halved its support after the election last autumn. Norstat has done a deep dive into the figures for news. What emerges there is not happy reading for Støre: the Labor Party has lost 260,000 voters lost since the election last autumn. The dropout has increased this autumn. Since 1 July, 750 voters have left Ap every single day. Government partner the Center Party is struggling just as hard. The party gets a support of 5.7 per cent on an average of the measurements on the website Poll of polls in December, compared to 18.3 for Ap. That support would have given the two governing parties 46 mandates, compared to today’s 76. In other individual polls, the support has been even more dismal. Today, Vårt Land came up with a new survey carried out by Norstat which shows that the Labor Party gets a support of 14.6 per cent and the Center Party ends up below the threshold with a support of 3.8 per cent. – Disappointingly, the Labor Party has on several occasions explained the drop in support by saying that it has been a very demanding year, with war in Europe, record high electricity prices and galloping price increases for fuel and food. Prime Minister Støre admitted when he visited news’s Political Quarter today that the opinion polls are not pleasant reading. – The numbers are discouraging, he said. But Støre says it is not these numbers that he is most worried about. On Politisk kvarter today, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre says that the figures are discouraging. Photo: ISMAIL BURAK AKKAN / news – These are the numbers that hit Norway, hit people in everyday life and the economy, the tasks that must be solved together and that hit from the weeks we took over government responsibility, and that we have received on our table – that’s it which is now my task, he says. This year, the government has spent NOK 45 billion on a scheme with electricity support for Norwegian consumers. But the opposition believes the scheme should have been far more generous and points to the state raking in even greater income from the high electricity prices. – So far, the average price is 422 øre per kilowatt hour in Oslo. As consumers, we pay 121 øre of this. The system is simple and unbureaucratic. Everything happens automatically and you can read the figures on the invoice, said Støre in his summary. Støre has so far refused to increase the electricity subsidy for households. But in VG before the weekend, the head of AP’s own electricity committee, Kari Nessa Nordtun, came out and said that the scheme should be improved, and that electricity should be cheaper in Norway than in Europe. Lost deputy leader Not even internally in the Labor Party has 2022 gone smoothly for Støre. Last winter, Hadia Tajik resigned as deputy leader and minister following revelations in the media relating to conditions surrounding her commuter accommodation. In Trondheim, former deputy leader Trond Giske has built up Ap’s largest local team, namely Nidaro’s social democratic forum. Giske has in several contexts, not least in matters of electricity, spoken very critically of Støre and the government. Ahead of Ap’s national meeting in the spring, central people in the party want to expand the party leadership with a new deputy leader. Several highlight Minister of Education Tonje Brenna as the most relevant candidate. Støre has not yet made any changes among the ministers. But recently Kristoffer Thoner and Hallvard Hølleland were brought in as new state secretaries at the Prime Minister’s office. However, it caused debate, as Thoner came from the consulting company McKinsey. The demand for transparency regarding Thoner’s customer lists came quickly, both internally and at the Storting.
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750 voters have failed Støre every day this autumn – news Norway – Overview of news from different parts of the country
