Overview
- Preliminary results from the vote held on Sunday showed the opposition centre-left with a razor-thin advantage in the 349-seat Riksdag, with projections ranging from a 175–174 edge to 176–173 as counting continued.
- The Social Democrats were the single largest party with about 28% of the vote and roughly 99 seats in early tallies, even as their share fell to the lowest level in over a century.
- The Sweden Democrats saw their recent surge stall and lost seats, polling around 17.6% and roughly 62 deputies in preliminary counts, reversing years of growth.
- Magdalena Andersson said she is prepared to govern if the result holds, but internal disagreements within the left bloc and the Centre Party’s refusal to join a government with either the Sweden Democrats or the Left Party make coalition building uncertain.
- If final ballots confirm a centre-left majority, policy shifts are likely to include continued Western alignment and tougher immigration rules than earlier decades, and the process of forming a stable government could take days or weeks as parties negotiate.