Right-Wing Bloc Wins Sweden’s Elections
Sweden’s political landscape is undergoing a seismic shift after a right-wing bloc won the country’s elections this week, narrowly defeating Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson’s center-left coalition.
The victorious bloc—composed of the Sweden Democrats and the Moderate, Liberal, and Christian Democrat parties—ultimately won three more parliamentary seats than Andersson’s coalition. They were propelled to victory by the far-right Sweden Democrats, who secured more than one-fifth of votes and are now Sweden’s second-biggest party, despite a historically extremist reputation and neo-Nazi origins.
Negotiations are now underway to form a new center-right government that will be headed by the Moderate Party, as the bloc previously decided. But experts say the Sweden Democrats are also poised to hold greater sway in shaping the future of Swedish politics, given their clear popularity during the elections.
“Because the Sweden Democrats are so phenomenally strengthened, actually power moves not just from one side to the other side of the political divide—it moves quite significantly to the right,” said Elisabeth Braw, an FP columnist and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
“It’s not clear whether they will be invited to be part of the government, but either way they would have a major role in Parliament,” she added.
As issues of gang violence and immigration dominated the election, the Sweden Democrats vowed to drastically curb immigration, rattling civil society and immigrant communities. Jimmie Akesson, the leader of the Sweden Democrats, has pledged to “make Sweden good again.”
Writing in Foreign Policy, Braw argued that the left’s negative campaigning ultimately helped catapult their opponents to victory. “Their fascist-scare rhetoric propelled the far-right Sweden Democrats to a stunning result…and helped the center-right bloc win an unexpected victory,” she wrote.
After the election results became clear, Andersson announced her resignation on Thursday. Ulf Kristersson, the leader of the Moderate Party, is now set to create the country’s new government in a lengthy process expected to take weeks.
“We have an election result, we have the mandate for change we asked for,” Kristersson said on Wednesday. “I will now begin the process of forming a new government for Sweden and all its citizens.”