Sweden held the closest general election in its modern history on Sunday, and it is not over yet.
On the preliminary allocation from the Swedish Election Authority, the centre-left opposition has 176 of the Riksdag's 349 seats. The centre-right bloc of Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has 173. A majority is 175. Postal and overseas votes are still being counted, and a margin of three seats is well within the range that late ballots have moved before.
"Every vote that has been cast must be counted," said Magdalena Andersson, the Social Democratic leader who would lead any centre-left government.
The question the campaign became
Elections are rarely about one thing. This one came close.
For four years the Sweden Democrats, a party with roots in the far right, supported Kristersson's government from outside it without holding ministries. During the campaign Kristersson proposed changing that: bringing them into government for the first time.
That proposal turned the election into a referendum on a single question, and the Sweden Democrats had been expected to benefit. Their critics feared a breakthrough. Their supporters expected one.
It finished third, on 17.6 percent, behind the Moderates on 19.9 percent. By The Irish Times's account it is the first decline in the party's history.
The largest party had a weak night too
The result is not a straightforward endorsement of the other side.
The Social Democrats are the largest party on 28.1 percent, but that is down from 30.3 percent in 2022 and among the weakest showings in their long history. Their bloc's lead rests on its smaller partners, and those partners disagree with each other, and with the Social Democrats, about tax and welfare spending.
Andersson ran on stricter migration rules alongside crime prevention, a platform that took ground the right had claimed as its own. Her call for "a new spirit of co-operation in Swedish politics" is an acknowledgement that governing with 176 seats will require exactly that.
The Irish Times reports that coalition negotiations could run until Christmas.
The comparison with Germany
A week ago this desk reported that the AfD had won 39 of 83 seats in Saxony-Anhalt, leaving the parties that refuse to govern with it holding exactly the same number. On Saturday 150,000 people marched for a ban on the party.
Sweden offers the opposite experiment. Its mainstream right did not build a firewall. It offered the far right a place in government and put that offer directly to voters. On the preliminary count, the voters declined it, and the party being offered power lost support in the process.
It is one election, decided by three seats, in a country with its own history. It is also the clearest recent case of a European electorate being asked the question directly rather than having it answered for them by coalition arithmetic.
What to watch
The final count this week. If the three-seat margin holds, attention moves to whether Andersson can assemble a government from partners who disagree on taxation. If it narrows to a tie or reverses, Kristersson's proposal will be tested again in coalition talks rather than at the ballot box, and the Sweden Democrats' decline will matter less than their seats.
The preliminary seat allocation of 176 to 173 from the Swedish Election Authority; the vote shares of the Social Democrats (28.1 percent, against 30.3 percent in 2022), the Moderates (19.9 percent) and the Sweden Democrats (17.6 percent); the description of the Sweden Democrats' result as their first decline; the framing of the election around Ulf Kristersson's proposal to bring the Sweden Democrats into government; the expected timing of the final count; the assessment that coalition talks could extend to Christmas; and the quotations from Magdalena Andersson are as reported by Euronews, The Irish Times and NBC News on 13 and 14 September 2026. The analysis is our own.
Topics worldelectionscoalitions
