How to
watch Sweden’s election like a pro
Latest
polls put Sunday’s vote in NATO’s newest member on a knife-edge.
Magdalena
Andersson and Ulf Kristersson stand ahead of Swedish state television's final
debate on September 11, 2026 in Gaevle, Sweden. | Anders Wiklund/AFP via Getty
Images
September
13, 2026 4:00 am CET
By Tim Ross
https://www.politico.eu/article/how-to-watch-sweden-election-like-pro/
STOCKHOLM
— Millions of Swedes will vote in a tense general election on Sunday that is
set to deliver a new left-wing government or bring far-right ministers into
power for the first time.
The
Social Democrat-led left bloc enjoyed a comfortable lead for months but polls tightened
significantly in the final two weeks of the campaign, with one 11th-hour
survey suggesting a dead heat.
“Two or
three weeks ago, we were saying this is a done deal,” said Gustav Karreskog
Rehbinder, who is running results forecasts for Sweden’s public broadcaster SVT
on election night. “Now it seems that it will be a more exciting night than
expected.”
The vote
will have potentially significant consequences for security in Europe and the
wider debate over integrating the far right into mainstream politics. Here is
POLITICO’s guide to the contest, the candidates and the countdown to declaring
a winner.
How does
the election work?
There are
349 seats in the Riksdag, Sweden’s parliament, which is located in an imposing
waterside building on an island in central Stockholm.
The
country chooses its lawmakers every four years using a proportional
representation voting system, meaning that if a party gets about 20% of the
votes across Sweden, it will have about 20% of the seats in the Riksdag.
Coalitions are the norm.
But
there’s a catch: Very small parties are eliminated and get no seats at all if
they do not meet the minimum threshold for support of 4% of the national vote.
This could be a vital element in a closely fought contest, when the smaller
parties may hold the balance of power.
Nearly 8
million people are registered to vote and turnout tends to be high — more
than 80%. This year, a record number of people are expected to have cast their
ballots early, which they’ve been able to do since Aug. 26. If they change
their minds, these early voters can vote again on Sunday, canceling their
original choices. Regional and local elections take place at the same
time.
Who gets
to govern?
After the
last contest in 2022, eight parties were elected to parliament and they have
been fighting this summer’s campaign in two blocs — one on the left and
one on the right.
That
means there are only two realistic candidates to be prime minister: the
incumbent, conservative Moderate party leader Ulf Kristersson; and Magdalena
Andersson, the former PM who leads Sweden’s biggest party, the center-left
Social Democrats.
Kristersson
has run the right-wing coalition for the past four years thanks to influential
support from the second biggest party, the far-right Sweden Democrats. They
backed him in votes in parliament and drove policy in a hardline direction,
including crackdowns on crime and especially immigration. But the Sweden
Democrats did not join the coalition cabinet. That could now change.
Can the
far right enter the government?
Kristersson
divided opinion in 2022 when he broke a decades-long taboo against working with
the far right and did his deal with the Sweden Democrats, who had won 20% of
the vote. The SD was founded in the 1980s and some members in those days had
roots in neo-Nazi movements. The party has taken steps to clean up its act in
recent years, though not to everyone’s satisfaction.
Now
Kristersson says he will give the SD ministerial seats in government if his
side wins on Sunday, as part of an agreement with the far-right leader, Jimmie
Åkesson. That would be another huge step for Sweden and one that the opposition
has seized on.
“Of
course this would be a different country with a government with half of the
ministers from the Sweden Democrats,” opposition leader Andersson told AP
recently. “It would not be good for Sweden if they would get the keys to the
ministry of defense or the ministry of foreign affairs.”
Kristersson
insists he would still be in charge overall. He points to his work with Åkesson
over the past four years which he says has revived the economy and cut rates of
violent crime and immigration, both of which had been major public concerns. “I
can guarantee you that it will only be very skilled and experienced and people
with good judgment that would be part of my government,” he told
POLITICO.
For his
part, Åkesson says it’s time for the SD to take the next step and assume the
responsibility of governing. He is eyeing up the chance of becoming prime
minister himself at the next vote, due in 2030. The SD sums up its vision for
the country with the phrase: “Sweden should be safe, free and Swedish.”
What is
at stake for Sweden and Europe?
Apart
from the question of far-right power — which is a political preoccupation
across the continent, especially after recent state
elections in Germany — both the left and right leaders have traded blows on
the question of security, and who will be strongest in standing up to
Russia.
In a
POLITICO interview Andersson demanded that Kristersson come
clean after it was claimed that an SD official allegedly promoted
pro-Russia narratives and linked up with a Russian state group inside Sweden.
For his part, Kristersson in his own POLITICO interview questioned
the left bloc’s commitment to NATO, which Sweden has only been a member of
for two years.
One thing
unites both candidates for prime minister: continuing Sweden’s support for
Ukraine. In its long history, Sweden has been at war with Russia multiple times
and the threat Moscow poses is seared into the national consciousness.
Otherwise,
the campaign focused on consumer politics — helping ease the cost of
living and improve Sweden’s famous welfare state. The two sides made competing
promises of a better deal on taxes, housing, health and dental care costs, as
well as warnings over the impact of their rivals’ migration policies.
When will
we know who has won?
Swedish
broadcasters will release exit poll findings when the voting ends at 8 p.m.
local time on Sunday.
Karreskog
Rehbinder said he hoped to be able to give an early indication on SVT of how
the election will unfold once 10% of the votes have been counted, which he
expects to be around 9.15 p.m.
If the
final tally is extremely close and it’s not clear which side is ahead in the
first hours after the voting ends, he said it would likely not be clear until
all the counting has finished — which isn’t expected until Wednesday 16 Sept.
or later.
The Swedish Election Authority usually publishes “an initial
provisional allocation of seats” in the Riksdag at around 10.30 p.m. on
election night, if enough voting districts have reported their results by then.
But even
once the final results are known, it will take weeks or perhaps even longer
before a new coalition is formed. And if the parliament cannot ultimately agree
on a new prime minister, a fresh election could be called.
Parties
on the right are largely settled in their so-called Tidö alliance — named
after the castle where their agreement was signed in 2022. But there have been
deeper splits between some of the smaller parties in Andersson’s left bloc,
which could prove a challenge to her attempt to stitch together a majority
government.
“If you
look at the prediction markets and polling aggregations, they say exactly the
same thing — there’s about a 70% probability of a left-wing win, which is of
course much narrower than it was three weeks ago,” said Karreskog Rehbinder,
who is the founder and CEO of political tech startup Vera Policy. “That would
still be my best guess but it is far from sure.”
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