Sweden’s centre-left leads by three seats as vote counting continues

Sweden’s high-stakes general election results remain too close to call as vote counting continues, with early trends showing the centre-left opposition in a narrow lead over the right-wing government.

Swedish Social Democratic Party leader Magdalena Andersson told supporters on Sunday the opposition coalition is leading the count, and if the results stand, “Sweden will get a new government”.

Earlier, polling ended at 8pm local time (18:00 GMT). With 94.4 percent of votes counted, the centre-left opposition was expected to win 176 seats in the 349-member parliament, the Swedish Election Authority said in its latest update early on Monday, against 173 for the right-wing governing bloc.

However, Andersson’s party, which governed Sweden for most of the 20th century and remains the country’s largest, also looked to be heading for its worst score in more than a century with 28.1 percent of the vote, down 2.2 percentage points from 2022.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who leads the ruling coalition, said he would contact other party leaders after the results, adding that it remains an open question who will govern Sweden in the coming years.

“When we have the final result, it’s a good idea to look at possible combinations,” he said, adding that “there is a very clear non-socialist majority, or non-left-leaning economic majority in the Swedish parliament. And I will actually take note of that and at least figure out whether there are any possibilities.”

Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Akesson said “we will not know tonight” who will form the next government. The party took 17.6 percent, down almost 3 percentage points from its 2022 result of 20.5 percent, and fell to third place behind Kristersson’s Moderates.

Counting of late postal ballots and votes cast at Swedish embassies abroad begins on Wednesday, and the final result is not expected until the end of the week.

Earlier in the campaign, Sweden’s left-wing bloc appeared headed for a comfortable victory over Kristersson’s four-party alliance, which includes the nationalist Sweden Democrats. Polls early in the year had given the opposition bloc a lead of about 10 percentage points, but the race tightened steadily, and that advantage had collapsed to just two to three percentage points by the final weeks, turning what had looked like a relatively predictable election into a much closer contest.

A victory for Andersson would provide some respite for left-leaning parties across Europe, where right-wing and far-right parties have been gaining ground. Just last week, Alternative for Germany (AfD) won 44 percent of the vote in a key state election, putting a far-right party within reach of power at the state level in the country for the first time since World War II.

With roots in the neo-Nazi movement, the Sweden Democrats became the largest party on the right in 2022 and a crucial source of parliamentary support for Kristersson’s minority government.

They have remained outside government until now. Kristersson announced in April that his conservative Moderate Party would be prepared to be in the governing coalition if the right secured a majority, which would give the Sweden Democrats cabinet positions for the first time.