STOCKHOLM — Swedish voters went to the polls on Sunday in a parliamentary election that has developed into a tightly contested choice between continuity under Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and a return to power for former prime minister Magdalena Andersson, with the future status of the Sweden Democrats emerging as the central question hanging over government formation.
The election is being held four years after Kristersson’s Moderate Party took office at the head of a minority centre-right coalition with the Christian Democrats and Liberals. That government has depended on parliamentary support from the Sweden Democrats under the agreement that reshaped Swedish politics after the 2022 election. The arrangement gave the nationalist party substantial influence over government policy, particularly on immigration, criminal justice and integration, while leaving it formally outside the cabinet.
This time, that dividing line could disappear. Kristersson has opened the way for Sweden Democrats representatives to take ministerial positions if the right-wing parties retain enough seats to govern. Such an outcome would mark the first time the party has exercised executive authority from inside a Swedish government rather than using its parliamentary strength to influence another coalition from outside.
The Sweden Democrats entered the final stage of the campaign as a major force on the right. In the 2022 election, they won 20.5% of the national vote, finishing ahead of the Moderates and becoming the largest party within the parliamentary grouping that ultimately enabled Kristersson to take office. Their support turned them from a party once isolated by the political establishment into an indispensable partner for the centre-right.
Party leader Jimmie Åkesson has spent more than two decades overseeing that transformation. The Sweden Democrats were founded in the late 1980s and had early links to extremist and neo-Nazi movements, a history that has remained central to political debate over whether the party should be admitted into government. Under Åkesson, it expelled openly extremist figures, moderated parts of its public presentation and built an electoral base around opposition to immigration, tougher criminal policy and a stronger emphasis on Swedish national identity.
The political breakthrough of 2022 nevertheless stopped short of cabinet membership. The Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals formed the government, while the Sweden Democrats supported it through the parliamentary agreement commonly associated with the four cooperating parties. The distinction allowed Kristersson to secure a majority for major legislation while avoiding the historically sensitive step of appointing Sweden Democrat ministers.
Sunday’s election could therefore determine not only which political bloc controls the Riksdag but also whether Sweden’s political system takes the next step in normalising the Sweden Democrats as a governing party. For the Social Democrats and their allies, preventing that development has become one of the clearest political dividing lines of the campaign.
Andersson, who served as prime minister before losing power after the 2022 election, is seeking to return at the head of a centre-left administration. Her Social Democrats remain Sweden’s largest individual party in opinion polling and have led national politics for much of the country’s modern democratic history. Yet their path back to government depends not simply on finishing first but on assembling sufficient parliamentary support among parties with significant differences on economic policy, taxation and other issues.
Swedish parliamentary politics is organised around a fragmented eight-party landscape. On the right, the governing constellation consists of the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals, together with the Sweden Democrats. On the opposing side, the Social Democrats are joined in the broader parliamentary arithmetic by the Centre Party, Green Party and Left Party. The relationships inside both groups mean that the final seat count can matter more than the national ranking of any single party.
That makes Sweden’s four-percent national threshold for entering the Riksdag especially important. In a close election, the performance of one smaller party can change the balance of dozens of potential government combinations. A party falling below the threshold could effectively remove a bloc’s ability to reach a majority even if its larger partners perform strongly. Tactical voting by supporters seeking to keep a smaller allied party in parliament has consequently become an important feature of the closing stages of the campaign.
The Riksdag has 349 seats, making 175 the figure associated with an outright parliamentary majority. Sweden’s system, however, frequently produces minority governments and places considerable emphasis on negotiations between parties after an election. A prospective prime minister does not necessarily need every supporting party to enter the cabinet, but must be able to survive the parliamentary process required to take office and subsequently pass budgets and legislation.
Final polling before election day pointed to an increasingly narrow contest. The centre-left had held a more comfortable advantage earlier in the campaign, but that margin contracted as voting approached. Some late polling put the competing blocs less than a percentage point apart, reinforcing the possibility that parliamentary thresholds, turnout and small movements among undecided voters could determine which side obtains the stronger mandate.
More than eight million people are eligible to vote in the parliamentary election in a country of roughly 10.6 million residents. Voting takes place simultaneously for the Riksdag and for Sweden’s regional and municipal councils. Polling stations opened at 08:00 local time and remain open until 20:00. Early voting had already drawn unusually heavy participation before election day, adding another layer of uncertainty to assessments of turnout and late campaign momentum.
Once polling stations close, election workers begin the preliminary count. The Swedish Election Authority is due to publish preliminary results during election night, while the formal final count conducted by county administrative boards begins on September 14. In a contest this close, political parties are expected to focus on the distribution of parliamentary seats rather than headline national vote shares alone.
The campaign itself has ranged across healthcare, welfare services, crime, immigration and household finances. Healthcare has emerged as a particularly prominent concern, reflecting voter frustration with waiting times, staffing shortages and pressure on regional services. Parties across the political spectrum have proposed reforms, ranging from stronger central government involvement to expanded primary-care capacity and shorter waiting-time guarantees.
The Social Democrats have emphasised strengthening public services and the welfare state, seeking to frame the vote around healthcare, schools, employment and economic security. Andersson has argued that Sweden requires greater social cohesion and more investment in the institutions that have historically defined the country’s social model. Her party has also sought to distinguish itself from the government through proposals involving taxation and public spending, while adopting a tougher position on migration than it held during earlier periods in power.
Kristersson and the governing parties, meanwhile, have defended their record on crime, energy, migration and economic management. The government took office in 2022 after years in which shootings, explosions and organised criminal networks had become major political issues. It introduced tougher criminal legislation and pursued one of the most restrictive migration policy shifts in modern Swedish politics, much of it developed in cooperation with the Sweden Democrats.
Those issues remain significant, but the campaign environment has changed. Inflation has eased from previous peaks, while some measures of serious criminal violence have improved. That has reduced the dominance of the themes that helped the right win in 2022 and moved questions about healthcare, purchasing power and government composition closer to the centre of the debate.
Immigration nevertheless remains the policy area most closely associated with the Sweden Democrats. After years of calling for sharply reduced asylum and migration levels, the party has increasingly emphasised policies encouraging some immigrants to leave Sweden, alongside tougher citizenship and integration requirements. Several of these themes have already influenced government policy during the current parliamentary term despite the party’s position outside the cabinet.
Formal entry into government would give the Sweden Democrats a different level of responsibility. Cabinet ministers oversee departments, participate directly in executive decision-making and represent Sweden in European Union and international meetings. The transition from supporting legislation in parliament to administering ministries would therefore be a significant institutional change regardless of how much influence the party has already exercised since 2022.
For Kristersson, the issue also creates a delicate balance. His Moderates want to retain the prime minister’s office even though the Sweden Democrats have recently been the larger of the two parties in electoral support on the right. The Sweden Democrats, meanwhile, have argued that their parliamentary strength should be reflected in government influence. Negotiations over portfolios could therefore become a major issue if the right wins enough seats to remain in power.
The opposition faces its own coalition difficulties. A strong Social Democrat result would not automatically guarantee Andersson a straightforward route to office. The Centre Party and Left Party differ significantly on taxation, private enterprise and economic policy, while the Greens have their own priorities on climate and environmental policy. Andersson could therefore need to construct a parliamentary arrangement in which not every supporting party receives cabinet positions or agrees on every element of a government programme.
Foreign and security policy has been less divisive than domestic issues. Sweden joined NATO in 2024 following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and has since increased defence spending, military preparedness and cooperation with Nordic and Baltic allies. Both major political camps broadly support NATO membership and continued strengthening of Sweden’s defence capabilities, limiting the likelihood of a dramatic strategic change regardless of which side forms the next government.
The election still has wider European significance. Nationalist and populist-right parties have expanded their influence in numerous European countries, sometimes supporting conservative governments from parliament and in other cases entering governing coalitions directly. The Sweden Democrats’ possible move into cabinet would place Sweden more clearly within that wider political trend, although the party’s development and Sweden’s coalition system have distinct national characteristics.
For many Swedish voters, however, the immediate choice is less about European political trends than about who can assemble a functioning government. The closeness of the race has shifted attention from individual party rankings toward the arithmetic of competing blocs, the survival of smaller parties and the agreements that leaders may be prepared to make once the votes are counted.
The 2022 election demonstrated how narrow margins can reshape Swedish politics. The right secured enough parliamentary support to remove Andersson from office, but only through cooperation with the Sweden Democrats. The four years that followed gave the party unprecedented influence without placing it formally inside government. Sunday’s vote will determine whether that arrangement is renewed, expanded into full cabinet participation or replaced by a centre-left administration.
The first election-night figures will offer an indication of which bloc has the advantage, but they may not immediately answer every question about government formation. A narrow parliamentary result could lead to negotiations extending beyond election night as parties assess possible agreements and determine whether a viable candidate for prime minister can command sufficient support in the Riksdag.
Until the count is substantially complete, the defining uncertainty remains intact: whether Sweden will return to a Social Democrat-led government under Andersson or continue under Kristersson with the Sweden Democrats potentially moving from influential parliamentary partner to formal governing party for the first time.
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