During the last decades many studies have analyzed how incumbent political parties distribute benefits across regions and different voter groups. In this paper, I investigate whether there could be vote-maximizing motives behind the distribution of school closures across electoral districts in Sweden. Closures of welfare services are one of the most important drivers of political activism independent of established political organizations in Sweden and closures affecting one advocacy group often imply that another group can keep their welfare institutions intact. Two hypotheses are tested through a quantitative study on school closures in Sweden 2002-2010. The first hypothesis, inspired by Lindbeck & Weibull (1993) and Dixit & Londregan (1996), predicts that the incumbent government will avoid unpopular decisions affecting swing voters in order to minimize electoral losses. In contrast, the second theory, inspired by Cox & McCubbins (1986), predicts that incumbent will avoid decisions hurting their own supporters.
