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With more than 90% of the votes counted, the results of the Sunday 13 September election to Sweden’s Riksdag have broadly confirmed the final polls. The centre-left opposition led by former Social Democratic prime minister Magdalena Andersson holds a razor-thin 0.2 percent lead over the outgoing government, giving it 176 seats to the right bloc’s 173, although late and overseas ballots mean the result is not yet final. The Social Democrats remain by far the largest party, but at around 28% have fallen to their weakest result in more than a century. Even if Andersson returns to office after four years in opposition, discord among her potential coalition partners could make government formation difficult and constrain how far a new administration can break with four years of right-wing rule under the sway of the far-right Sweden Democrats.

The election nevertheless produced clear gains to the Social Democrats’ left, with strong gains for the Left Party and the Greens. In the final weeks of the campaign, bread-and-butter concerns over purchasing power, healthcare, schools and the quality of the welfare state increasingly displaced immigration and crime, issues on which the Social Democrats have themselves moved sharply to the right, helping to make the xenophobic rhetoric of the far-right mainstream. This appears to have left space for voters looking for a clearer left alternative, and for the Left Party in particular a campaign focused heavily on the cost of living and public services appears to have found an audience. A strong emphasis on direct voter contact – the party conducted a massive campaign of door-knocking, phone calls, and local mobilisation – may also have helped translate that favourable issue terrain into votes.

Despite the left bloc’s narrow victory, Andersson’s potential government allies remain divided, the question is therefore not simply whether the left can return to government, but what kind of politics it can offer after four years of far-right influence. 

Support for Social Democrats Craters

The Riksdag, Sweden’s parliament, currently hosts eight parties, broadly divided into two blocs. For most of the summer, the centre-left opposition – the Social Democrats (S), the Greens (MP), the Left Party (V) and the Centre Party (C) – held a substantial lead over the right-wing “Tidö” bloc: the Moderates, Christian Democrats (KD), Liberals (L) and Sweden Democrats (SD). At its peak, the centre-left led by around 10 points, 54 to 44 percent while the Social Democrats were polling just above 30 percent – already a bad result for Sweden’s oldest party – with the Moderates on 17 percent and the Sweden Democrats sitting just below 20. 

A poor campaign, in which the Social Democrats tried to please voters to their right and left, convincing neither, saw their support fall to just 28.1 percent – their worst result in more than a century and down from 30.3 percent in 2022 and their previous worst result of 28.3 in 2018.  The Left, Greens, and Centre Party all performed well, winning 8, 7 and 6 percent respectively. On the right, the far-right Sweden Democrats were the big losers, falling to around 18 percent, losing ground for the first time since entering parliament, and falling behind the Moderates. Ironically, all three official government parties saw modest increases in support of just under one percent, the Moderates growing to 20 percent, the Christian Democrats winning 6 percent, and the Liberals comfortably clearing the 4 percent parliamentary threshold after spending much of the campaign below it.

The election nonetheless produced a narrow centre-left victory: with around 94 percent of the vote counted, the Social Democrats, Left, Greens and Centre Party were projected to win 176 of the Riksdag’s 349 seats, compared with 173 for the four-party right-wing Tidö bloc – but with lead just 0.2 percent.  While Magdalena Andersson is now in pole position to return as prime minister, the result doesn’t promise stable government. The Social Democrats’ weakened position means a left-bloc government will require the involvement of all three minor cenre-left parties, a constellation further complicated by the Left Party’s insistence on full government participation as a condition of its support. The Social Democrats have shown little enthusiasm for such a deal, while the Centre Party – traditionally a party of the centre-right – has rejected it outright.  

The Centre Party’s hope, shared by some in the Social Democrats, of persuading the Christian Democrats to support – or even join – a minority S-MP-C government has been ruled out by Christian Democrat leader Ebba Busch. Attempts by the Social Democrats to look for allies and voters to the right only further encouraged left wing voters, already uneasy with its right turn on migration, crime, and citizenship, to shift towards the Left or the Greens. Despite the right-bloc’s narrow defeat, Moderates leader Ulf Kristersson has not ruled out attempting to form a government himself, piling further pressure on the centre-left to form a functional government.

The Sweden Democrats' Influence

Tensions on the centre-right, largely over how to relate to the Sweden Democrats, have been resolved in the latter’s favour. Formed in 1988 out of the racist, far-right organisation Keep Sweden Swedish (itself founded by Nazis and neo-Nazis), the Sweden Democrats spent their first 30 years behind a political “cordon sanitaire”. In 2022, they became Sweden’s second-largest party with 20.5 percent of the vote, but any failure to enter government was less a continuation of this firewall than a decision by the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals to form a minority government dependent on the Sweden Democrats for external support, through the Tidö Agreement (named for the castle where it was negotiated). 

The Tidö Agreement granted the Sweden Democrats most of their major policy demands, including tougher criminal penalties, expanded deportation powers (such as on the grounds of “dubious morals”), tighter asylum, residence and citizenship rules, and a shift from renewables to nuclear power. It also gave the Sweden Democrats an unprecedented coordinating office inside the Government Offices, allowing the far-right to work alongside and influence governing parties on legislation and budgets, veto core domestic policies, and access information and briefings normally available to ministers. The Sweden Democrats thus became a governing force without ministerial posts. Much of the Tidö Agreement’s reactionary programme, particularly on migration and law and order, has since been implemented.

Jimmie Åkesson, Far-Right Violence and the Örebro Party

Rather than moderating through proximity to government, the Sweden Democrats have continued to intensify their provocative rhetoric. Their campaign slogan, “Make Sweden like Sweden again” – itself a reference to the party’s radical far-right origins – has accompanied inflammatory attacks on migrants and welfare recipients. This includes plastering buses in western Sweden with the message: “Do you miss Mogadishu? The repatriation grant helps you home”, and spending over a million kronor to blanket Stockholm Central Station in similarly inflammatory posters. As the campaign progressed, preventing the Sweden Democrats from entering government became a central electoral argument of the left bloc parties.

On the right, however, the political question was now no longer whether the Sweden Democrats should join a right-wing government, but how much direct power they should receive, with their leader Jimmie Åkesson demanding at least twelve ministerial posts. Both the Moderates and Christian Democrats have accepted the prospect of full Sweden Democrat participation, and while the Liberals remained opposed, in March this year the party’s new leadership abandoned that position. That backflip triggered massive internal upheaval, costing vital public support and leaving the party polling well below the 4 percent threshold until only days before the vote.

With these changes, the Sweden Democrats are now effectively a fully established part of Sweden’s right bloc. The party’s normalisation has also created space and comfort for other, sometimes dangerous, expressions of radical-right politics. Incidents of Islamophobia and far-right violence, including activity associated with the global Active Clubs phenomenon, have increased. In Örebro, where a gunman killed 10 people in 2025 – most of them of immigrant backgrounds – the obscure far-right Örebro Party received significant media coverage during the campaign. 

The Örebro Party was formed in 2014 by expelled Left Party member Markus Allard, yet its policies – mass “remigration”, welfare chauvinism, aggressive assimilation, forced labour for criminals, and a DNA database to monitor residents’ ethnicity – place it to the right even of the Sweden Democrats. With significant financial backing from tech millionaire Daniel Berntsson, co-founder of Mullvad VPN, some polls gave the party up to 15 percent support in the Örebro region, enough to win a directly elected “top-up” seat. Its result fell far short of this, but in the municipal and regional elections, the Örebro Party doubled and tripled its support, respectively.

The Left Party’s Plan to Reverse Inequality

While the right sought to once again make crime and immigration the central election issues, concerns over public services and the cost of living also asserted themselves. With Sweden’s welfare model under growing strain, this focus was strengthened by the fact that Sunday’s vote was actually a triple election, with Sweden’s 21 regional councils, responsible for health, public transport, and regional development, and 290 municipalities, overseeing schools, social services, care, and recreational facilities, all facing re-election. Sweden faces shortages of nurses (made worse by recent immigration reforms) and aged-care workers, ballooning emergency-room waiting times, and stubbornly high food, housing, and energy costs. The country also has the third highest unemployment rate in the European Union, and a youth unemployment rate of 23.3 percent. 

Seeking to shore up its traditional support base, the Social Democrats presented a raft of proposals, including free dental care for under-23s, and cheaper treatment for other adults, higher child and student allowances, higher taxes on banks and high earners, greater union rights, and paid sick leave from the first day, while also promising to cut national debt. The right-wing government, feeling secure about the health of Sweden’s economy amid falling inflation, cut fuel tax and temporarily halved VAT on food, while promising free kindergarten places. The Sweden Democrats, too, promised subsidised dental care, while the Christian Democrats called for a doubling of child benefits and tax-breaks for small business. 

The Left Party took a more radical approach, presenting the election as a chance to reverse decades of inequality and the erosion of public services. Its demands included universal dental care (an issue later picked up by the Social Democrats), a “billionaire tax” to raise SEK 50 billion (approx. EUR 4.5 billion), stronger price controls, cheaper food, and expanded public investment, alongside more healthcare staff, stronger primary care and an end to profit-driven welfare and marketised education.

On climate and infrastructure, the Left argued for a much larger role for public investment in the transition – expanding rail and public transport, renovating and building climate-friendly housing, and supporting the transformation of industry. Their argument was not simply for increased spending, but for greater public ownership, democratic control, and a redistribution of wealth and power. While the Greens and Social Democrats also promised additional resources for schools, healthcare, climate, regions and municipalities, they have been less willing to challenge the privatisation and market mechanisms that have undermined Sweden’s welfare state, including under previous Social Democrat-led governments. 

The Left has spent the years since the 2022 election preparing for government, including moderating its positions on NATO and the EU, and – while heavily debated within the party – its demand for ministerial representation is central to its strategy for change. External support for previous Social Democrat-led governments gave the Left only limited influence, allowing the Social Democrats to compromise repeatedly with parties further to the right. Government participation would give the Left Party greater leverage over welfare, taxation, housing, and climate policy. 

For the Centre Party, however, this is precisely why it opposes the Left Party entering government. Despite moving away from its former right-wing allies over their cooperation with the Sweden Democrats, the Centre Party remains committed to lower taxes, a “flexible” labour market, and the for-profit schools and welfare provision. The Centre Party also opposes the Social Democrats’ proposals on higher corporate taxes, workers’ rights, and sick leave, and its preferred outcome remains an S-MP-C-KD government across the centre. With the final results looking incredibly close, the Centre Party’s intransigence may prove critical.

Teen Deportations and Inaction on Climate Change

The consequences of Sweden’ increasingly restrictive migration policies also point to the limits of change under a government led by the Social Democrats. Most controversial is the “teen deportations” issue, where tightened migration laws mean the children of long-term migrants, many of whom have grown up in Sweden, can face deportation when they reach adulthood, while their parents and younger siblings remain. Recent reporting identified at least 127 such deportation cases in 2025, many involving “well-integrated” children of people with work, study or business permits, with little or no connection to the countries to which they were being sent (such as Egypt and Iran).

Facing public outcry, the government temporarily paused removals, and finally lifted the dependency age from 18 to 21. This came too late for the hundreds already affected, and the issue has exposed a deeper political challenge. Having moved right on migration and integration, and terrified of appearing “soft on borders”, the Social Democrats initially refused to back legislative moves by the Left, Greens and Centre Party to stop the deportations. In the face of immense backlash, the Social Democrats eventually came out against the deportations, but the party still supports a restrictive migration framework, including government proposals to make it easier to revoke the Swedish citizenship of dual citizen holders. The episode therefore raises doubts about how far the Social Democrats in government would depart from the Tidö consensus on migration.

Climate policy is another dividing line, with 37 percent of respondents to a recent poll identifying climate change as a main election priority. Sweden has long presented itself as a climate leader, but the Tidö government has weakened previous ambitions, put new main railway lines on hold, suspended night-train plans, and prioritised nuclear power and cheaper fossil fuels over renewables. On August 23, around 50,000 climate activists marched in Stockholm, five times the expected turnout, demanding more urgent climate action.

The Social Democrats’ climate strategy centres heavily on industrialisation, including fossil-free steel, mining, and electrification. But setbacks including the bankruptcy of battery developer Northvolt have exposed the risks of large-scale private investment supported by public resources. The strategy is also criticised by environmentalists and the left for a lack of urgency, reliance on “green capitalism”, and limited attention to biodiversity, forests, and conservation.

In contrast, the Left Party instead advocates broader public investment: rebuilding railways, expanding public transport and night trains, renovating and constructing climate-friendly housing, supporting industrial transformation, and making electric vehicles and household energy investments more affordable. The Left’s campaign proposals also included a nationwide public-transport card costing SEK 450 (approx. EUR 40) a month, and “Sweden prices” to decouple domestic electricity from European energy markets. It insists that increased public investment should come with greater public ownership and democratic control.

NATO and Swedish Neutrality

Sweden joined NATO in March 2024 after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine ended decades of military non-alignment, but NATO membership has featured little in the campaign. Most major parties now agree on membership, the Russian threat, and increased defence spending. Sweden is rapidly integrating into NATO and increasing military expenditure, while providing substantial support to Ukraine, leaving a potential left government to reconcile those commitments with investment in healthcare, education, housing, and climate.

The Left Party remains opposed to NATO, but it accepts that Swedish membership is a reality. It instead focuses on security policy within the alliance, calling for a ban on nuclear weapons, opposing foreign military bases, and seeking to preserve Sweden’s diplomatic independence. Its pragmatic acceptance of NATO membership also removes a formal obstacle to joining government, but this has not been enough to resolve tensions with its potential partners or to prevent the party’s demonisation in the mainstream press.

Demonisation of the Left Backfires

In the final weeks of the campaign, right-wing newspaper Expressen ran a scare campaign against the prospects of a centre-left government, with leading editorials issuing warnings like "the left can sink the Swedish economy". The Left Party in particular came under sustained attack, including the targeting of local election candidates over claims – some of them justified, but quickly resolved – of “antisemitism” and “terror romanticism”, and criticism of the party for meeting with politicians from Palestinian party Fatah. 

The attacks failed have their desired effects. The Left Party saw important gains in urban centres – especially in suburbs with a high density of migrant-background voters, and increased support among first time and young voters and among women.  These communities – already suffering from the cost of living and deteriorating services – were also put off by the Social Democrats’ rightward march on migration. 

These gains came on the back of an unprecedented grassroots campaign by the Left, including door knocking half a million doors and phoning half a million more. The swing was most pronounced in areas where the Left was most organised, such as Sweden’s three largest cities Stockholm, Gothenburg, and especially Malmö. All three cities have moved left and will now be governed by S-V-MP majority coalitions.

What Comes After The Four Year Tidö Government?

Early voting reached a record 45.56 percent this election, with surges in areas of greater inequality and social exclusion and high rates of migrant backgrounds, challenging assumptions that these communities are politically apathetic.

The centre-left appears to have won the election, but an Andersson-led government – if it can be formed – would inherit a political landscape deeply transformed by the centre-right and far-right and years of increasingly restrictive migration, tougher criminal justice, increased military expenditure, and market-oriented economic policy, all of which the Social Democrats have themselves helped to shape. Simply restoring the Social Democrats to government will not reverse that trajectory.

The September 13 vote was a test not only of who will govern Sweden – at a national, regional and local level – but of whether the public services, democracy, and egalitarianism that Sweden once claimed to represent and be defended and restored. The Left stronger position – building on its excellent European Parliament election results in 2024 – has given it an opportunity to push the next government towards wealth redistribution, stronger welfare, public investment and a more ambitious climate transition. 

But the Left Party will have to demonstrate that it can operate close to power without becoming a left appendage of the Social Democrats, while developing and promoting a convincing response to the politics of insecurity. The Sweden Democrats spent decades moving from the political margins into the centre of Swedish politics, bringing their politics with them. The task for the Left is not simply to remove them from government, but to change the material and political conditions that allowed them to get there in the first place.

This article was updated reflecting the results of the 13 September election.

Duroyan Fertl is a former political advisor for Sinn Féin and the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) in the European Parliament. Since 2021, he has been coordinating the work of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Brussels Office in the Nordic countries.

The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation is one of the six major political foundations in the Federal Republic of Germany, tasked primarily with conducting political education both at home and abroad. The foundation is closely linked to Die Linke, a democratic socialist party in the German parliament.