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Seventeen subject areas
The key issues page divides politics into seventeen areas, from the economy and health care to defence and climate. For each area and party, parliament's own hit count for a defined search in the open register is fetched. The search terms are stated openly on the sources page, so anyone can repeat the search on riksdagen.se.
Motion, interpellation and question
A motion is a proposal from one or more members. It is prepared in a committee and finally decided by the chamber. An interpellation is a written question to a minister answered orally in the chamber and followed by a debate. A written question is answered in writing within a week and leads to no debate. All three are ways for a member to raise an issue, but only the motion can lead to a decision.
Committee, report and decision
An item passes from the committee to the chamber in a report. The chamber then approves, rejects or partly approves the proposals. Rejection is the ordinary outcome even for large parties: the great majority of motions are rejected, often with reference to work already under way in the government or to an inquiry.
What the figures do not say
The number of items measures attention and activity, not quality, not impact, and not whether you agree. A governing party often pursues its policy through the government rather than through motions, which gives lower figures without the party having done less. A search term can also catch items that merely mention the word in passing and miss items using other words. Read the figure as a way into the items, not as a grade.
When the register does not answer
The figures are fetched straight from parliament's open register when the page is opened. If the register does not answer for a party, no figure is shown for that party, and the page says so plainly with a button to try again. No zero is shown instead, because a zero would mean something entirely different.