Yes, they appear to be the startup version. It tends to get 0.1-0.6% of votes (if they missed that there is a crisis, I would guess more 0.1 then 0.6). The reason I am not particularly afraid that these will come out of the greens (because the greens missing parliament would be bad), is that the Pirates effectively tend to strenghten more established parties that has the same issues somewhere on their agenda, usually the greens. They are more effective in getting attention to the policies then getting the votes, as voters tend not to vote for a party that says nothing on other important issues of the day.

However, the Pirate parties that has reached electoral success has usually gone through this phase. Traction on the issues and doing the election things builds a group, that then realises they need more to get more votes and start to process how they can expand their agenda without breaking the existing group.

That was why my hope was for electoral participation, not electoral success.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se