Posted pasts. Strategic uses of the past in the 2022 Danish and Swedish national election campaigns on Facebook

Building on the conceptualisation of negative campaigning as an attack-oriented strategy outlined above, we here add a temporal dimension that enables us to distinguish between two ways in which the past structures negative campaign messages. Whereas long-term accusations reach back to deep ideological roots, short-term calls for accountability highlight recent scandals or policy failures. Together, these two strategies reveal how different memories of the past serve to undermine an opponent’s legitimacy, credibility, or competence.

Long-term accusations typically frame an opponent’s ideology or moral character as either chronically problematic or historically exceptional. Short-term calls for accountability instead attribute blame for recent crises, scandals, or broken election promises. We show that these two logics perform different narrative functions. Long-term accusations serve to draw a symbolic “line in the sand” by portraying opponents as historically tainted. In contrast, short-term calls for accountability seek to erode trust and perceived competence by focusing on recent (mis)actions. By exploring them side by side, our analysis expands conventional typologies of negative campaigning by demonstrating how attacks vary not only in target and tone, but also in temporal depth. In our coding, “long-term” refers to references that go back several decades or invoke more abstract ideological trajectories, whereas “short-term” comprises attacks tied to events confined to the most recent parliamentary term.

Swedish posts involving the past operate within a longer time frame. A recurring example of this is the Centre Party’s discrediting of SD by highlighting its extremist origins:

I get a little worried when I hear Jimmie Åkesson’s false advertising that they have their roots in the countryside. No, the Sweden Democrats have their roots in Bevara Sverige Svenskt [a Swedish neo-Nazi organisation in the 1980s]. (Centerpartiet, 2022a)

By reminding voters about SD’s links to the 1980’s neo-Nazi movement, the Centre Party placed the contemporary party outside the democratic mainstream and framed any cooperation with SD as a violation of civic norms. In a repost from the previous party leader and Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, the Social Democrats contributed to this narrative by referencing SD’s “problematic” relationship to liberal democracy:

The Sweden Democrats’ stance on liberal democracy is problematic. It is no coincidence that leading representatives of the party expressed their support for Trump ahead of the 2020 US presidential election, or that they in parliament have praised Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. (Socialdemokraterna, 2022a)

The quotes illustrate how long-term accusations draw on temporally distant but morally charged episodes to stigmatise opponents and set the parameters of acceptable coalition-building. The same long-term logic is noticeable in other Swedish attacks. The Liberals, for example, blamed current problems with the Swedish school system on the Social Democrats’ decision to municipalise schools “thirty years ago” (Liberalerna, 2022a), while the Moderate Party traced the 2022 energy crisis to the 2013 decision to begin a phase-out of nuclear power (Moderaterna, 2022a). Although these arguments are less emotionally charged than the SD critique, they nevertheless extend blame across decades and thereby suggest that contemporary problems are symptoms of systemic mismanagement deeply rooted in Social Democratic rule.

While Danish parties occasionally reached further back – the Liberal Alliance (2022a), for example, lamented that “Danes’ legal certainty hasn’t been this bad in many decades” and that this problem “didn’t start with Mette Frederiksen’s government” – such references were the exception. The overriding pattern was a focus on events during the latest parliamentary term, reflecting the extent to which highly mediatised scandals dominated the discourse. Danish parties overwhelmingly relied on exposing recent misaction, centring their posts on the short-term past. In particular, this was the Social Democratic government’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic, the related mass culling of minks, and the so-called FE case. A representative post came from the Conservative People’s Party:

Yesterday, Mette Frederiksen suddenly decided she wanted to apologise for some of the mistakes made during the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. Wait! Is she finally taking responsibility for the mink scandal?! (Det Konservative Folkeparti, 2022a)

The use of irony – clearly signalled by the rhetorical question – undermines the sincerity of the apology and keeps the mink scandal in the public eye. The same message was reinforced in a similar post from the smaller party, the Denmark Democrats (Danmarks Demokraterne, 2022) and the Liberal Alliance, which amplified the scandal narrative by calling Frederiksen the “prime minister of scandals”:

Mette Frederiksen is the prime minister of scandals, and the more that emerges about the Defence Intelligence Service scandal, the clearer it becomes that there are serious issues at the top. We need answers, and we need them now. Danes deserve to know the truth about the scandal that has thrown our intelligence services and our relationship with the US into chaos. (Liberal Alliance, 2022b)

Sticking to the same basic theme, the New Right portrayed the pandemic lockdown as a betrayal of young people:

Why would anyone vote for someone who says one thing before the election and then does something else when she gains power? Corona had almost no impact on children and young people. Yet they were held hostage by the government’s handling of the pandemic. (Nye Borgerlige, 2022)

These posts all link anger about very recent events to a broader verdict on Frederiksen’s trustworthiness and competence, thus framing the election as a referendum on her crisis leadership rather than on ideological substance. A similar rhetoric was also present in Sweden – such as when the Moderate Party described the Social Democrats’ term in office as “the biggest betrayal of election promises in modern times” (Moderaterna, 2022b), or when the Christian Democrats accused the government of not “daring to take the fight against honour crime” (Kristdemokraterna, 2022) – but it played a much less central role than in Denmark.

As we now move on to consider narrations of the past in positive campaigning, we will see that similar national patterns were traceable in this communication.

Similar to the negative campaigning discussed above, our analysis has identified two dominant temporal ways of referencing the past in positive campaigning. Heritage claims draw on deep party history to project ideological authenticity and consistency. This includes parties highlighting century-long commitments, legendary leaders, or foundational moments (e.g., suffrage or rural modernisation) to signal ideological consistency and moral authority. Achievement narratives, instead, emphasise recent political successes to showcase a party’s governing competence. This typically takes the form of incumbent parties showcasing tangible policy “wins” gained during the current or most recent parliamentary term – thereby affirming their capacity as successful leaders. Thus, whereas heritage claims invite voters to place their trust in an unbroken lineage, achievement narratives encourage them to reward demonstrable (recent) results in the form of actual political outputs. Heritage claims of this kind mirror the long-term self-historicising practices documented in Nordic party histories and nationalist narratives, where parties position themselves within extended trajectories of democracy, welfare, and national character (Håkansson, 2023; Linderborg, 2001). Although such posts often draw on experiences from what actors themselves might still frame as the political “present”, we treat references to the outgoing electoral period as invocations of a recent governing past once they are narrativised and evaluated in retrospect.

Mirroring the tendency found in negative campaigning, it is striking that Swedish parties draw on a longer time frame and are more prone to making heritage claims than their Danish counterparts. One of the most prominent examples is the Centre Party, and its recurring distancing from, firstly, the Sweden Democrats, and secondly, the centre-right parties that cooperate with them. In one of these posts, they uploaded a clip from a 1976 election debate where former party leader and Prime Minister Thorbjörn Fälldin states that “the recognition of the equal value of all people, of the equal rights of all people” is the foundation of their ideology. The caption to the clip underlines that,

No, it’s not the Centre Party that has changed. It’s others who have done so. A vote for the Centre Party is an insurance against the SD getting influence over the government. (Centerpartiet, 2022b)

This came as a response to the criticisms from former coalition parties over their decision to support a Social Democratic prime minister candidate with the expressed purpose of preventing a government with SD (thus taking another step away from the old bloc structure of the Swedish party system). By underlining that this is coherent with their ideological core and legacy, the Centre Party actively invoked their own party history to shift blame to the centre-right parties that have changed their mind about cooperating with SD.

Perhaps as a response to the Centre Party’s strategic decision to focus strongly on ideology and core democratic values, the Liberals – the party receiving by far the most criticism for cooperating with SD – repeatedly brought up past achievements in this area to portray themselves as both pioneers and bulwarks of democracy:

Our party introduced democracy in Sweden over 100 years ago. We introduced universal and equal suffrage. We paved the way for women today […]. (Liberalerna, 2022b)

The liberal ideology has developed through centuries of defending individual liberty and clear limits on state power. That is why liberals are at the forefront of creating strong constitutions. (Liberalerna, 2022c)

A lot of the warning messages regarding SD originated from the premise that having a radical-right party with influence in the government is unprecedented in Sweden, and highlighted the many uncertainties regarding what they may achieve in such a role. In this context, the second quote can be read as an attempt to downplay how dramatic such a shift would be, since limits on state power and “a strong constitution” set clear boundaries for what changes to the political and democratic institutions a government can implement, even if they secure a parliamentary majority.

Another way that Swedish parties engaged positively with the past in a long-term perspective was to interpret a topical debate in terms of a core ideological value of one’s own party, thereby expanding issue ownership and reevaluating conflicting values, for example, in the debate on freedom versus security:

For more than 50 years, we moderates have consistently fought for more personal freedom. But never in modern times has freedom in Sweden been restricted by violence and crime as it is today. Security has become the great freedom issue of our time. (Moderaterna, 2022c)

This post also illustrates the broader Swedish pattern: Historical self-references are mobilised not as static nostalgia, but as flexible argumentative resources. By casting a present surge in violent crime as the ultimate threat to personal freedom, the party framed a contemporary law-and-order agenda within a half-century tradition of liberal–conservative rhetoric, thereby extending its ideological brand while claiming issue ownership in the security domain. Across the Swedish data, such heritage claims enable parties to (re-)narrate present challenges through the lens of enduring identities, legitimising both strategic repositioning and cross-bloc manoeuvres.

In contrast to the Swedish parties’ tendency to anchor their positive campaigning in decades-old ideological legacies, the Danish parties – and especially the governing Social Democrats – relied on a markedly shorter time horizon. In this context, references to the most recent parliamentary term function as achievement narratives that emphasise concrete policy outputs and crisis management rather than abstract historical lineage. One frequently recurring theme among these posts is broad cross-party cooperation, which was used as proof of their responsible leadership:

Politics isn’t about arguing until you’re blue or red in the face. It’s about finding common solutions to the country’s major challenges and helping those who have the least. Under the Social Democratic government, 9 out of 10 agreements have been made across the political centre. Let’s continue this broad cooperation. (Socialdemokratiet, 2022a)

Other posts reinforced this narrative by pointing to, for example, the swift passage of Denmark’s 2019 climate law and the country’s progress towards the 70 per cent emissions-reduction goal within a single parliamentary term (Socialdemokratiet, 2022b). Such references to the past serve to translate recent governmental experience into a forward-looking promise of capacity and continuity.

The Social Democratic Facebook campaign also incorporated autobiographical vignettes into these achievement narratives. In the following quote, revisiting the government’s Covid-19 response, we see an example of how voters were invited to read institutional accomplishments through Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s lens of personal commitment and moral duty:

“We do what it takes”. That’s what Magnus and I said to each other that afternoon – Wednesday, March 11, 2020 – just before the press conference where we announced the partial lockdown of the country. It turned into some difficult and dramatic years. But we stood together as a people and a nation – and that meant we saved lives and brought the economy safely through the crisis. Leadership is also about standing firm. Especially when the storm hits. (Mette Frederiksen, 2022a)

By pairing references to a collective memory of dramatic events with intimate personal recollections, this can be considered an attempt to humanise otherwise technocratic decisions, aiming at deepening voters’ trust in them as leaders. The same dynamic was at play when the prime minister made references to her official apology in 2019 to the so-called “Godhavn boys”, who were mistreated in Danish public orphanages between the1940s and 1970s (Mette Frederiksen, 2022b), or in her self-praise of the introduction of an early retirement scheme (“Arne pension”) at the second anniversary of the reform, before describing it as in danger of being abolished if she loses power (Mette Frederiksen, 2022c).

Although the communication of Danish parties was overwhelmingly present-oriented, occasional references to the more distant past reveal how heritage claims can still be made when they reinforce contemporary positioning. On the fiftieth anniversary of Denmark’s accession to the European Union, for instance, the Social Democrats posted a reminder:

Exactly 50 years ago, the Danish people voted to become a member of the European Community – later the EU. The then Prime Minister, Jens Otto Krag, was one of the main driving forces behind it and saw membership as a prerequisite for the welfare society. The uncertain times we are experiencing today show how important it is that we stand together in Europe and maintain international alliances. It is important that we stand firm by our values of freedom and democracy. (Socialdemokratiet, 2022c)

When taking a step back, we see that these posts differ from the Swedish long-range appeals less by intent than by temporal scale. Whereas Swedish parties invoke the distant past to assert ideological authenticity, Danish actors instead leverage a more recent past to demonstrate competence and pragmatic resolve. Both strategies, however, pursue the same ultimate end: the curating of selective pasts to justify future claims.

Beyond these strictly positive or negative communication strategies, there is a third distinct way in which parties make use of the past to increase their own appeal. Interestingly, this third strategy includes an appraisal of the other party’s past, combined with an accusation that they have now betrayed this past. It could be argued that this strategy is a type of negative campaigning, insofar as its ultimate aim is still to level criticism against opponents. The combination of appraisal and accusation, however, clearly sets it apart from other types of negative campaigning. To highlight this difference, we refer to this strategy as ambivalent employment of the past in campaigning.

This ambivalence is apparent in SD’s nostalgic stories of the “old” Social Democratic party, combined with the critique that they have now abandoned their own past:

I have a great respect for the social democracy of the old days. That is, those who built our welfare society. Because they were the ones who did that. Not because they were Social Democrats but because they became social conservatives – like us. […] They managed to ensure that we had a successful business community that could support and develop our welfare society. That has been completely abandoned. […] And so, Sweden was allowed to decay, and that’s where we are today. (Sverigedemokraterna, 2022)

Previous research has shown that the Sweden Democrats’ nostalgic narratives about the social democratic legacy, and in particular the establishment of “the People’s home” – the great expansion of the Swedish welfare system in the 1930s and 1940s – are not isolated messages, but part of a more overarching communicative strategy to become more mainstream. By tying into a familiar narrative about Sweden’s past, parties can still connect to a vaguely defined nationalist “us” (Merrill, 2020). Indeed, as shown by Håkansson (2023: 249), the restorative idea of rebuilding “the People’s home” has been described by SD itself as one of their core missions since the early days of the party’s existence.

Temporality is central to this strategy. Rather than explicitly comparing one’s own policies with those of another party, these messages contrast the past with the present versions of the other party to highlight their current flaws. The implication is also that one’s own party still stands for the values that the opponent has abandoned, and thus this strategy functions to appeal to the disillusioned voters of the other party. While this may often be done implicitly, the Sweden Democrats do it explicitly, for example, in the quote above, by stating that the positive reforms from the Social Democrats in the past were achieved “not because they were Social Democrats, but because they became social conservatives – like us” (Sverigedemokraterna, 2022). Thus, rather than just presenting competing interpretations of the present and visions of the future, this campaign rhetoric actively invokes the past to reappropriate the legacy of another party for one’s own benefit.

A similar ambivalent campaigning strategy consists of addressing more overarching ideological themes, and shaming the other party for abandoning their core values by contrasting their (honourable) actions of the past with their (exceptionable) behaviour in the present:

Just over [30] years ago, the liberal party leader left the TV studio when representatives of a xenophobic party came on the air. Today, the party leader of the Liberals promises to do everything in his power to give a xenophobic and anti-liberal party with Nazi roots access to government power after the election. It is sad to see how easily a liberal party throws its values of liberalism and humanity overboard. (Socialdemokraterna, 2022b)

While this quote does not contain an explicit prescription to vote for the Social Democrats instead, it is clearly an attempt to make voters who prioritise the values of liberalism and humanity less likely to vote for the Liberals – thereby increasing their own appeal. Thus, the nostalgic reference to liberal antiracism serves both to shame the Liberals and to position the Social Democrats as guardians of liberalism and humanity. In another post from the party, the same rhetoric was used, but with an explicit comparison, emphasising that the Social Democrats can be trusted to stand by their values, whereas others cannot. This message also addresses the question of how other parties relate to the Sweden Democrats, but targets the Moderate Party by stating that they no longer have “the backbone that Ulf Kristersson showed in the last election campaign” (Socialdemokraterna, 2022c), when he refused to cooperate with SD. The implied lesson in this post – that leaders who betray their own past commitments cannot be trusted – connects directly to the theme of trustworthiness highlighted in our discussion above of negative campaigning. This further illustrates that the past can indeed be invoked in many ways and serve different rhetorical functions, but with the same ultimate purpose: portraying one’s own party as more deserving of the voters’ trust than the opponents.

As far as the Danish campaigning goes, our analysis has not identified the same type of explicit appraisals of a political opponent’s past. However, ambivalent campaigning involving the past still occured. Again, the rhetoric of Danish parties has a much shorter time span than their Swedish counterparts. What is curious in this context is that these posts also followed an opposite temporal logic:

Just as the election campaign kicks off, the Social Democrats present a proposal to increase the employment deduction. That’s great. But it doesn’t quite align with the policies they’ve pursued over the past three years. For instance, they’ve raised taxes more than 40 times and made nine out of ten income groups poorer. […] They claimed that tax cuts would lead to layoffs in the public sector. Now the tune has suddenly changed. It doesn’t add up. We, on the other hand, stand firm. We don’t invent new political proposals just because an election is around the corner. (Det Konservative Folkeparti, 2022b)

Here, we see that the Conservative People’s Party approved of the policy proposal as such, but they sought to cast doubt on the sincerity of the proposal by highlighting that the Social Democrats previously acted in contradiction to their own proposal. The past was invoked to question the trustworthiness of proposals and promises made in the present. This was then contrasted with their own policies, which were portrayed as consistent and predictable. In other words, whereas the past and present actions of the political opponent were argued to contradict each other, the past and present of their own party were implied to be coherent and continuous. In a related post, their party leader explicitly stated that this contradiction is reason to question the sincerity of the proposal:

Frankly, I don’t know what to make of the credibility of that shift in direction. The last time we debated, [Mette Frederiksen] claimed it would lead to thousands of public sector layoffs. Thankfully, that’s not the case – neither with her plan nor with mine. We’ll meet again tonight for the prime ministerial debate. And I’m actually looking forward to praising her for the shift in policy. (Søren Pape Poulsen, 2022)

Although the policy was repeatedly praised, rhetorically, this appraisal mainly seems to have served an ironic purpose to criticise the opponents.

Thus, while both Swedish and Danish ambivalence hinge on temporal comparisons, their time horizons once again diverge. While Swedish parties draw on iconic episodes from the 20th century to argue that opponents have strayed from foundational values, Danish parties emphasise policy U-turns within the same parliamentary term to undermine credibility. Taken together, these ambivalent uses of the past blur the analytical line between positive and negative campaigning. Praise for a rival’s past achievements and actions functions as a sort of Trojan horse that delivers a critique of their present behaviour and identity.

In relation to the previous discussion on negative uses of the past, this strategy seems to fill a rhetorical gap: As frequent negativism might risk fatigue or backlash from voters that object to mudslinging and attack-oriented rhetoric, ambivalence offers another way to recycle temporal narratives, while still drawing a sharp contrast between oneself and the opponent, and giving the sender an appearance of being nuanced and generous for handing out both praise and criticism. Similarly, ambivalent uses of the past seem to complement the parties’ positive campaign messages. By claiming to embody the abandoned virtues and legacies of their rivals, parties simultaneously elevate their own moral lineage and delegitimise opponents. This duality further underlines our broader argument that temporal depth – not just tone and issue attention – structures the strategic communication during elections.