Sweden’s general election remained too close to call on Monday, with the two main political blocs separated by roughly 20,000 votes after half the ballots were counted, public broadcaster SVT said.
Projected results from the Swedish Election Authority gave the centre-left opposition, led by Social Democrat Magdalena Andersson, 175 seats in the 349-seat parliament. The right-wing governing bloc led by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson was projected to take 174 seats. The count was based on votes from 4,853 of Sweden’s 6,312 election districts.
An exit poll by SVT put the centre-left coalition on 51.3 percent against the right-wing bloc’s 46.8 percent. A separate election-day poll by broadcaster TV4 also showed the centre-left ahead.
“If the current results hold, Sweden will have a new government,” Andersson told supporters on Sunday night, urging them to wait for the final count.
Kristersson said on Monday he would contact other party leaders after the vote, adding that it remained an open question who would govern Sweden in the coming years.
Partial results suggested the Sweden Democrats were losing support for the first time since 2010 when the party entered parliament. The party, founded by Nazi sympathisers in the 1980s, won 20.5 percent in the 2022 election to become the largest party on the right and a key source of parliamentary support for Kristersson’s minority government.
Swedish exit polls have not always proven accurate. In 2022, a poll projected an Andersson victory, but Kristersson’s right-wing coalition ultimately won. A confirmed win for the left would offer some relief to left-leaning parties in Europe, where the far right has gained ground, including the Alternative for Germany’s 44 percent result in a key state election last week.