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managed to take three parliamentary seats in 1964, but two of these eventually reunited with their original parties. The tiny Communist League for Marxists-Leninists (KFML) participates in elections but received a scant 0.4% of the vote in 1970.

1. Social Democratic Party

a. Membership and electoral strength

The Social Democratic Party, founded in 1889, is Sweden's largest party in terms of popular support and actual membership. Since 1917 it has regularly polled more votes in national elections than any other party, and after 1914 it consistently held the largest number of seats in the Lower House of the Riksdag. In the 1970 elections the Social Democrats obtained 45.3% of the popular vote, down from their all time high in 1968. In size the party is almost four and a half times larger than its nearest competitor; its 1967 membership of some 886,000 was 11.2% of the total Swedish population that year. More than 70% of the Social Democrats' strength is the trade union movement, but the party also has considerable support among white-collar workers and small businessmen and, to a lesser extent, among intellectuals.

The landslide victory of the Social Democrats in 1968 was in good measure attributable to the efficient organization of the election campaign, which had been stimulated by the heavy losses sustained in the local elections in 1966. All parties campaigned vigorously, however, resulting in a Swedish election record: 89% of the eligible voters cast their ballots. Nearly all of the 620,000 young people eligible to vote for the first time participated and were probably attracted to the modern, progressive Social Democratic platform. The impact of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, which occurred less than 4 weeks before the election, clearly deterred many who would normally have voted Communist. Most of these disenchanted leftists shifted their votes to the Social Democrats.

'''FIGURE 4. Trends in voting since 1944 (U/OU)''' (chart/graph)

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