The narrow victory of the left opens a difficult search for a new Swedish government.
Sweden's parliamentary election of 13 September ended with an outcome that was uncertain until the last moment: the four parties of the centre left won 176 of the 349 seats in the Riksdag, with a lead of just three seats over the bloc of the outgoing government. After the final count of the votes, on 17 September, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson submitted his resignation in a letter to the speaker of parliament. This ends four years in which Sweden was led by a minority government of the Moderates, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals, propped up by the votes of the Sweden Democrats.
That cooperation, known as the Tidö Agreement, brought the Sweden Democrats, a party with roots in the far right, closer to power than ever before. Before the election the Moderates even offered them the prospect of ministerial posts if the bloc won. Instead, the Sweden Democrats fell to 62 seats, 11 fewer than in the previous line-up of parliament, which is their first decline since they entered the Riksdag in 2010.
On 18 September the speaker of the Riksdag, Andreas Norlén, tasked the leader of the Social Democrats, Magdalena Andersson, with exploring the options for a new government. Her party remained by far the largest, with 99 MPs, but lost eight seats, so the victory of the opposition was delivered above all by her smaller partners. Andersson, who in 2021 became the first woman at the head of the Swedish government, said that she accepted the task with great humility and that she would act constructively. Her first term lasted less than a year.
The arithmetic of the majority, however, hides a difficult equation. The Left Party, led by Nooshi Dadgostar, demands a place in government and warns that it will not support a cabinet in which it does not take part. The Centre Party, for its part, took the side of the left because it does not want to govern with the Sweden Democrats, but just as firmly rejects ministers from the Left Party. According to a source in the Left Party, the Centre Party still refuses to sit down for joint talks. Dadgostar made it clear that her party would stick to its demand even if that pushed Sweden into a new election.
At the same time the Swedish constitution does not require the prime minister to have a majority behind them. A candidate is rejected only if an absolute majority votes against them, that is at least 175 of the 349 MPs. If parliament rejects the speaker's nominee four times, an extraordinary election follows. One option is a minority government of the Social Democrats, which would depend on the votes of the other parties.
The new Riksdag will meet on 28 September, when Andersson is to deliver a report on the talks, and the vote on a prime minister is possible the following day at the earliest. Experience is mixed: in 2018 the talks lasted a full 134 days, while in 2022 they were over within 37 days. Whether Andersson will manage to reconcile the two extremes of her bloc or Sweden will go to a new election will become clear in the coming weeks.