Sweden's Left Leads by Three Seats as Far Right Slips

Preliminary counts give Sweden's centre-left a three-seat lead as the far-right Sweden Democrats lose ground for the first time since 2010.

Sweden's general election on Sunday produced a photo-finish. With about 95% of votes counted, the Swedish Election Authority reported that the four opposition parties were heading for 176 seats in the 349-seat Riksdag, against 173 for the bloc backing outgoing Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. The opposition is led by former Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson of the Social Democrats, who is seeking to return to the office she lost in 2022. Both leaders said on election night they would explore coalition options to secure power.

The result breaks a two-decade narrative of uninterrupted far-right growth. According to CBS News, the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats lost ground for the first time since entering parliament 16 years ago, falling to 17.6% of the vote from more than 20% in 2022 and slipping to third place behind the Social Democrats and Kristersson's Moderates. Observers cited by CBS attributed the decline to strict migration and crime policies becoming mainstream, leaving the party without a distinctive edge on its signature issues.

The margins are extraordinarily thin. An exit poll published Sunday evening gave the left bloc 51.3% against 46.8% for the right, per TRT World, with the Social Democrats at 27.6% and the Left Party rising to 8.2%. The outcome may not be decided until Wednesday, when late and overseas ballots are counted.

Even a confirmed lead may not translate into power. According to CBS News, Andersson's bloc is fractured: the Centre Party refuses to support any government including the Left Party, while the Left Party says it will not back a government it is not part of. The Daily Star reports her partners also disagree with her on migration, a billionaires' tax and new nuclear reactors. Kristersson, meanwhile, hopes to court the Centre Party, which left his side of politics in 2019, though Lund University's Annika Freden told AFP nothing would come of it.

Sweden's pro-Western and pro-Ukraine consensus, including its NATO membership, is not in question. The fight is over migration policy. According to The Daily Star, the election could decide whether Kristersson's hard-right clampdown on migration continues or accelerates; his government abolished permanent residency for refugees, tightened welfare rules and stepped up expulsions. The Sweden Democrats had been promised cabinet posts if the coalition won, and a comeback by Andersson would halt that trajectory even though analysts expect no return to liberal migration policies.

A long formation battle looms. Parliament can vote on a new prime minister on September 29 at the earliest, and after the 2022 election it took 37 days to form a government — far shorter than the 134 days needed in 2018, according to CBS News. Analyst Mats Knutson of SVT told CBS that both blocs may end up in a stalemate that could end in a snap election, though Lund University's Freden said Swedish parties would do everything to avoid one. Kristersson warned that if all red lines remain, Sweden will have no government at all.