But sometimes problems get big enough to overcome that. Our pension system were destined to go bankrupt in about 20 years. All parties did almost quietly reform it into one that wont go bankrupt with a bang but rather scale down and slowly make most retirees poorer when the growth no longer can cover the old promises. This will now be done automatically withouth any further political decisions. Half our population got screwed with a fairly quiet "we realy have to do this".  On the other hand, the system will not crash as for instance the current German pension system.

The fringe parties do from my point of view listen less to logical reasoning and that is probably one of the forces moving voters from the socialist party to the opposition.  The logical voters have a lot of patience for stupid arguments tailored to attract the most mobile voters, the last 5-10% that decide the outcome of the election. But too much stupidity for too long to attract the fringe and keep fringe parties happy and the logical part of the core voters will start to move.