Sweden Votes in Knife-Edge Election That Could Bring Far Right Into Government

Voters across Sweden went to the polls on Sunday in a general election that could formalize a role in government for the far-right Sweden Democrats for the first time, a shift that would mark one of the most significant political changes in the country in a generation.

Polling stations opened at 8 a.m. local time and were due to close at 8 p.m., with results expected to begin emerging through exit polls shortly afterward and more complete tallies overnight. Roughly eight million of Sweden's 10.6 million residents were eligible to vote, and more than half had already cast ballots in advance, a reflection of the country's traditionally high turnout.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, of the Moderate Party, is seeking a second term against Social Democratic leader Magdalena Andersson, the woman he unseated in 2022. Kristersson currently governs through a minority coalition of Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals that depends on the parliamentary support of the Sweden Democrats, a party that has spent more than a decade shedding its most extreme image while campaigning on immigration restriction and law-and-order policy.

That arrangement, in place since the 2022 election, has kept the Sweden Democrats outside the cabinet even as they shape policy from the outside. Kristersson has signaled he is open to bringing the party formally into government if the right-wing bloc wins on Sunday, a step Swedish media and analysts describe as a historic breakthrough that would give the far right direct control of ministries for the first time.

A rightward drift

The political shift has been building for years. Persistent gang violence linked to criminal networks in Swedish cities, a record intake of asylum seekers in 2015, and rising public anxiety over integration have all pushed the electorate steadily rightward, according to reporting from Euronews. Opinion surveys in the campaign's final weeks described the race between the two governing blocs as extremely tight, with Kristersson closing a gap that had favored the center-left through much of the summer.

A win for the Sweden Democrats would not be unprecedented in the Nordic region, where allied parties in Finland have already gained ministerial footholds, but it would be the furthest the party has come toward power in Sweden itself since it entered parliament in 2010. The Swedish Election Authority, which administers the vote and will certify the final count, reported early and postal voting running at levels consistent with recent elections.

Whichever bloc prevails will need to assemble a working majority in the 349-seat Riksdag, Sweden's parliament, where no single party has held an outright majority in decades. Coalition talks, should the result be as close as polling suggests, could stretch on for weeks.

What's next

Final turnout figures and a near-complete count of the vote are expected within hours of polls closing Sunday night, though the distribution of seats among smaller parties, and therefore the shape of any coalition, may not be settled for days. Analysts are watching in particular whether the Sweden Democrats cross the threshold needed to claim cabinet posts, and whether Kristersson's junior coalition partners would accept governing alongside them in name as well as practice. A win for Andersson's Social Democrats would instead put the brakes, at least temporarily, on the rightward trajectory of Swedish politics.