Left on brink of victory in Swedish election
Social Democrat Leader Magdalena Andersson is on course to become Sweden’s next prime minister as her left-wing bloc holds an unassailable lead over the right and far right with 99.9% of results declared.
By 10.30 p.m. on Wednesday night, Andersson’s four-party grouping was three seats ahead of Ulf Kristersson’s alliance of the right and far-right parties in the race to control the 349-seat parliament.
The Swedish Election Authority is set to confirm the “preliminary” result when all the votes have finished being counted, expected on Thursday.
The election is one of the closest in recent Swedish history, and offered voters a sharp choice between electing a new left-wing government or allowing far-right ministers into power for the first time.
Swedish public broadcaster SVT called the election for Andersson’s side on Wednesday night. Her Social Democrats are Sweden’s biggest party and have enjoyed the loose support of three other opposition parties who are seen as her likely coalition partners: The Greens, the Center Party, and the Left Party.
Kristersson’s conservative Moderates have been campaigning alongside the Christian Democrats, the Liberals and the far-right, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats. His allies do not expect him to concede defeat until Andersson wins a vote in parliament to prove she can command a majority. That vote won’t happen before Sept. 29 at the earliest.
Coalition negotiations will begin in earnest once the final outcome is confirmed. In theory any combination of parties can form into a government but in reality, the two-bloc system is likely to hold, meaning Andersson will seek to govern with some or all of her left-leaning partner parties.
Andersson’s Social Democrats stand on 99 seats, with her most natural allies in the Greens on 22. But that still leaves her 54 seats short of a majority and with a potentially difficult task persuading the other two parties in her bloc to cooperate with each other.
The Left Party, which has a historic association with communists, is emboldened by increasing its seat tally at this election to 30. And it has said the price of supporting a government will be gaining ministers inside the new top team.
But the Center Party’s leader Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist has said she cannot support this, because the “fringes” must not dominate the next government. Thand Ringqvist, whose party is set to take 25 seats — enough to get Andersson’s bloc a majority — ideally wants to form a new centrist administration without either the Left Party or the far-right Sweden Democrats. But the parliamentary numbers do not add up to a majority for such a grouping.
The Center Party has said it will start talks with Andersson’s Social Democrats. Thand Ringqvist was clear on Wednesday night that Kristersson’s rightwing bloc had “lost their government mandate.” But she told SVT that “at the same time, the election result, as it stands, does not give a mandate for a political left turn.”
Kristersson had promised to elevate representatives of the far-right Sweden Democrats into ministerial positions in his government if he won. In the end, while his Moderates party increased their vote share, the SD fell backwards, bucking the recent trend that had seen far right populists gain ground elsewhere in Europe.
This article has been updated.
