With 95% of the votes counted, the right-wing bloc gathered 49.7%, while four parties on the left, including today’s Social Democrats, reached 49%. The final picture will come out on Wednesday after the votes of Swedish citizens living abroad and those who voted early are counted. The vote translates into a majority of just one seat in parliament for right-wing parties and in the last election, in 2018, three seats changed hands in the final count. Data from previous elections showed no pattern in how these late votes might affect the outcome, a researcher told thelocal.se, while liberal daily Dagens Nyheter said its analysis suggested the right bloc had a “good chance” of retaining his lead. Sweden’s political mainstream reflected on the apparent failure of their strategy to adopt the Sweden Democrats’ (SD) positions on crime and immigration in an attempt to win back far-right voters. Parties that had to varying degrees to embrace cooperation with the far-right all saw a drop in support: the centre-right Moderates party saw its vote slip to 19.1%, the Christian Democrats and Liberals also lost share, while the vote the SD’s increased by three points to 20.6% – the ninth election in a row that the party has widened its share of the vote. “The moderate party did not believe that voters would stay with the SD if the moderates moved to the right on immigration and crime,” said Mikael Gilljam, a professor of politics at the University of Gothenburg. “But it turned out voters wanted the real thing instead of ‘SD lite.’ Swedes were given a startling reminder of the SD’s anti-liberal traditions soon after the election when one of its best-known figures, Rebecka Fallenkvist, was filmed at an election party on Sunday night repeatedly giving a salute similar to the Nazi “sieg heil” . The party’s press secretary said Fallenkvist was drunk and “made a mistake”. Moderate party leader Ulf Kristersson, a potential prime minister, spent Monday afternoon meeting other party leaders in the right-wing bloc. But they kept a discreet silence in the face of uncertainty about the final outcome of the elections. SD leader Jimmie Åkesson said: “We had lunch. I have nothing else to say.” But top SD officials hinted at a coming clash with their bloc partners in the event of government formation negotiations, insisting on higher social security benefits in the face of the Moderate party’s promises to cut taxes. Sweden’s right-wing opposition leads on pre-election precipice – video “We have been incredibly clear that we will be the social conscience of a bourgeois government, with unemployment and sickness benefits as important emblems for us,” said Aron Emilsson, the SD’s foreign policy spokesman. The SD’s new status as the largest party on the right puts it in a strong position to win concessions, although the other three parties in the bloc have all said they will not allow the far-right to take ministerial posts. The small Liberal party remains divided over cooperation with the SD. It would only take one MP to break ranks for a right-wing government to fall, Giljam said. Center-left political leaders also bear some responsibility for SD’s success, according to Christer Mattsson, a leading researcher on right-wing extremism at the University of Gothenburg, worrying that politicians have abandoned their principles on immigration and anti-racism in an effort to remain in power. Voters were indifferent to the SD’s authoritarian nationalist politics and its historical roots in the Nazi movement, he said, and were instead drawn to his message that the economic benefits of globalization should be enjoyed by the native Swedish population rather than shared with poor immigrants. . “Public opinion polls show that Swedes are in favor of economic globalization,” he said. “But they want to pass the bill for that on to someone else.”
