It was just over an hour into the broadcast that SVT presented its polling station survey Valu.
The results were presented party by party and the Sweden Democrats got 13.9 percent according to Valu – slightly more than the election result which is 13.2 percent with 95 percent of the votes counted.
EU elections 2024
Success for the Green Party in Stockholm: Over 20 percent in the EU election
Lower voter turnout in the 2024 EU elections – Hylte lowest in Halland
Showed higher numbers
When the numbers had been presented individually, it was time to add up – but then something went wrong. None of the bars were visible – except SD’s which showed 18.8 percent.
– It was old test data that was shown, says Mikael Pettersson, project manager for the election coverage at SVT.
He explains that the production carries out extensive tests for several weeks before election night. During the tests, test numbers from the Electoral Authority are used to see that they reach the mark.
– For some reason, a test file like this remained and overwrote the file with the Valu numbers, says Mikael Pettersson, who is currently investigating how this could happen.
Corrected the error
The presenters Anders Holmberg and Camilla Kvartoft immediately realized that something was wrong.
– We wait and see if the numbers show up. They don’t really do that, Holmberg said in the broadcast.
When the distribution of mandates according to Valu was shown a few minutes later, the correct numbers were back.