Donald Duck's a Big Bird in Politics

Nov. 5 -- If you don't think of Donald Duck as a political figure, you haven't lived in Sweden very long.

With apologies to Bugs Bunny, SpongeBob SquarePants, and even Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck has a fine tradition of scoring high in Swedish national elections, among voters who favor the joke vote.

In fact, over the last 20 years, the Donald Duck Party has scored enough write-in votes at points to theoretically be the country's ninth-most-popular political organization. That's quackers!

The Donald Duck Party — better known in Sweden as Kalle Anka — dukes it out with the Tax Evader's National Party, the Beer Party and the Professional Bachelors Party for seats in the Riksdag, Sweden's 349-member parliament.

Nonexistent Candidates Disappear

About one in 20 Swedish voters cast their ballots for unofficial, write-in candidates. That's about 26,000 votes.

Donald's best showing in recent years came in 1985, when he took 291 votes. Perhaps in a country of 9 million, that's not that impressive. But let's remember — he's a cartoon duck and he frequently gets more votes than living, breathing politicians.

Sadly for Donald, the joke won't go on forever. Swedish politicians are changing election rules. By 2006, voters will be prohibited from choosing nonexistent candidates, eliminating the potential embarrassment of leaders having to open an embassy in Tomorrowland.

Momentum is already starting to shift. In national elections Sept. 15 — when Sweden's Social Democrats garnered 40 percent of the vote — the Donald Duck Party had one of its worst showings in years — earning just 58 write-ins.

Perhaps that's bad for a human politician. It's still pretty good for a cartoon duck. This strange expression of Donald's popularity is hard for many Americans to understand.

"Donald's an Everyman and he's very popular abroad, in many cases more popular than Mickey," says Hollywood historian Stephen Schochet, author of Fascinating Walt Disney. (The Walt Disney Co., by the way, is the parent company of ABCNEWS.com, which publishes The Wolf Files.)