Sweden’s parliamentary elections on Sunday were reported to be extremely even, but surely no one could have imagined the dramatic drama that has now been experienced, ‘s Nordic correspondent Pirjo Auvinen estimates.
STOCKHOLM The atmosphere of the election weekend was unusual. The queues for early voting places were long on Saturday, but also on Sunday. The doors at the polling stations were closed and in many places the queues were still snaking until the closing time at eight in the evening. Many seemed to want to express their opinion. The decline in the election result lasted.
Parties are good at sensing the mood of the electorate. That’s why the chairman of the Social Democrats and until now the Prime Minister of Sweden Magdalena Andersson continued to tour the suburbs even on election day. He had only one message: gå och rösta! Go vote!
Maybe the Regent Party Democrats knew that the situation was not good. Perhaps that is exactly why the social democrats’ election supervisors heard sincere shouts of joy only when it was confirmed that the environmental party would not fall from the parliament. Without the greens, a green-left government would be impossible. The Greens increased their support to five percent.
The mood in Demari was expectant, avvaktande, as many in the supervisors said.
Turn at three o’clock
For just under three hours, it seemed that the camp of the left parties, the greens and the center would win the government battle, not by a big margin, but still. There would be three more seats than for the right-wing camp, so the situation would not be as dire as this election season.
– It looks a little better, ventured the long-time former party secretary of the Swedish SDP Lars Stjarnqvist to evaluate.
Current party secretary Tobias Baudin praised that the good campaign was thanks to Andersson. According to the party secretary, Andersson has “grim for vinnarska”. A strong will to win or a competitive spirit would be called in Finland.
But suddenly the blue beam was stronger than the red one. Only as much as one seat in the Diet, but still. And the situation remained like this in the wee hours of the morning when the calculation was still in progress. And this is how the experts of Sweden’s SVT election broadcast thought it would remain, as long as the late advance votes and the foreign shells have been counted.
The election result produces a strange outcome
Let’s start with the Democrats. Andersson has only been party leader for less than a year, but he managed to do what is unusual these days. After two prime ministerial terms, the Dems continue to be the third largest party, and their support increased by 2.2 points, or 30.5 percent, from the last election. It is unusual for a party that has been in charge of government. Even so, the Dems who won the election would seem to lose the prime minister’s seat, because the combined seats of the Dems, the left party, the greens and the center will be lost to the right-wing camp.
The coalition’s two defeats
The moderate coalition is the big loser of these elections in two ways. It lost support by just under one percent compared to the last election, but an even more glaring loss is that the party clearly lost the first place in the right-wing camp to the Sweden Democrats. It casts a strong shadow of a coalition leader who wants to be prime minister by Ulf Kristersson over.
The biggest winner of the election is the right-wing nationalist Sweden Democrats, both in numbers and in order of magnitude. The party has been increasing its support since 1988 and now the numbers rose to 20.7 percent. An increase of more than three percentage points. It is now the second largest party in the Diet. The result is a shock in Swedish terms, the party leader made it Jimmie Åkesson.
Right up until this election, other parties refused to cooperate with the Sweden Democrats because they denounced its Nazi roots and anti-immigration. However, the coalition and the Christian Democrats calculated that the Democratic power can only be broken through cooperation with the Sweden Democrats.
The election result and especially its consequences are confusing. The largest party gets stronger, but loses the position of prime minister. A candidate whose own party suffered a double defeat will probably become prime minister. And the biggest winner doesn’t get into the government.
Government negotiations are said to be difficult, regardless of which camp it is about.
The coalition, the Christian Democrats, the Liberals and the Sweden Democrats have appeared as a quartet, but there is a lot of crossover, especially between the Liberals and the Sweden Democrats.
The parties can come to an agreement on the further construction of nuclear power and tougher sentences for gang criminals, but in terms of economic policy, the Sweden Democrats are closer to the Dems than to the coalition.
The final election result will be available on Wednesday. The difference in support for right-wing and left-wing options is now about 50,000 votes in the wee hours of election night.
Read also:
‘s updated monitoring of the Swedish parliamentary elections