Sweden vote to decide Kristersson future and Sweden Democrats Cabinet role

Sweden votes on Sunday in a contest between Ulf Kristersson and Magdalena Andersson. The result could bring the Sweden Democrats into Cabinet and reshape the next government.

In Short

• More than eight million voters will choose all 349 Riksdag seats
• Coalition arithmetic has dominated campaigning more than healthcare, crime or inflation
• Kristersson’s coalition currently relies on Sweden Democrats for parliamentary majority

Sweden votes on Sunday in an election that will decide whether Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson stays in office for a second four-year term and whether the hard-right Sweden Democrats enter the Cabinet for the first time, or whether the centre-left returns to power under former prime minister Magdalena Andersson.

More than 8 million people in the country of about 10.6 million are eligible to vote for the 349-seat Riksdag, which will then elect the next prime minister. In the campaign, the question of who can form a government has taken up more space than policy issues.

Kristersson has led Sweden since 2022 with a three-party centre-right coalition that depends on outside support from the Sweden Democrats for a parliamentary majority. The anti-immigration party has far-right roots but has moved closer to the political mainstream, and if the right is re-elected, it can expect Cabinet posts this time. Andersson, of the centre-left Social Democrats, is trying to return to office after losing power in the last election. Her party has led Swedish governments more often than not since World War II.

Experts said the campaign has been fragmented and incoherent, with questions such as how health care should be organised overshadowed by coalition maths. “Crime has come down, inflation has come down. So these topics are not really what people discuss,” said Zeth Isaksson, a sociologist in electoral behaviour at Stockholm University. “People discuss who is going to be in government, and that’s what the election is about.” Sweden’s politics is broadly split into two four-party blocs, one on the right and one on the left, and parties need at least 4 per cent of the vote to enter parliament. Nicholas Aylott, associate professor of political science at Sodertorn University, said “it would be a sensation if the opposition parties, having been ahead in the opinion polls pretty much for four years since the last election, didn’t now win a majority”. But he added that an “extremely defensive” campaign by the Social Democrats may have cost them support, while the right bloc’s effort to appear more united may have had “a little impact”.

A major difference this time is the likely role of the Sweden Democrats. The party won 20.5 per cent of the vote in 2022 to become the biggest party on the right, and Kristersson said in April that his conservative Moderates would allow it into government if the right secures a majority, though he would remain prime minister even if the Sweden Democrats are stronger. The party was founded in the 1980s by people who had been active in right-wing extremist groups, including neo-Nazis, but under leader Jimmie Akesson it softened its rhetoric and expelled openly racist members. Aylott said, “There’s some, I won’t say fear, but trepidation, apprehension about the possibility of Sweden Democrat ministers,” and added that the Social Democrats had recently tried to use that in the campaign. Even so, Isaksson said the election may strengthen the impression that the Sweden Democrats “have peaked to some extent”.

Russia and Ukraine have not been a major dividing line. “The biggest threat to Sweden’s security is from the war in Ukraine and there is almost complete consensus in Sweden about support for Ukraine and deep antipathy towards Russia,” Aylott said. Sweden’s Psychological Defence Agency said the election is not Russia’s top priority because that broad agreement reduces the incentive for Moscow to interfere. Still, just over a week before the vote, Expo magazine reported that a civil servant working in parliament for the Sweden Democrats had spread Russian state narratives on social media. She is the partner of Gustav Gellerbrant, head of the party’s coordination office with the government. Gellerbrant said her posts had been taken out of context and were meant as irony and sarcasm, and said he was going on parental leave so the issue would not shift the focus of the campaign. Kristersson, who said “there is no room for pro-Russian narratives in Sweden,” welcomed that decision.

After decades of post-World War II neutrality and a longer tradition of non-alignment with major powers, Sweden joined NATO in 2024 as the alliance’s 32nd member. The move was initiated by Andersson’s government after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and completed under Kristersson, adding to the backdrop as voters now decide which bloc will form the next government.

With PTI Inputs

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