Turnout: 53.39%
About this election
Sweden's European Parliament election of 9 June 2024 returned the Social Democrats (Socialdemokraterna) as the largest party with 24.77% and five of Sweden's 21 seats, and produced a striking result on the green left: the Greens (Miljöpartiet) surged to 13.85% and three seats, finishing third and well ahead of expectations, while the governing Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna) underperformed at 13.17% and three seats. The Moderate Party took second place with 17.53% and four seats. Turnout was 53.39%.
As in every European election, Sweden's MEPs were elected in a single nationwide constituency by open-list proportional representation (modified Sainte-Laguë) with a 4% threshold and an optional personal-preference vote. Sweden's allocation stood at 21 seats following the post-Brexit redistribution. Because the country forms one constituency, there is no regional seat distribution to map.
The campaign took place midway through Ulf Kristersson's right-wing government and against a backdrop of war in Ukraine, the cost-of-living squeeze, climate policy and migration. Security and defence were unusually prominent, Sweden having just joined NATO in March 2024. The Greens and the Left ran hard on climate and on opposition to the government's rollback of environmental measures, while the Sweden Democrats sought to make the election a verdict on EU migration policy.
The Left Party (Vänsterpartiet) rose to 11.06% and two seats, the Centre Party slipped to 7.29% and two, the Christian Democrats fell to 5.71% and one, and the Liberals took 4.38% and one. The headline story was the contrast between a resurgent environmentalist left — the Greens nearly doubling their share from the 2022 general election — and a disappointing night for the Sweden Democrats, whose vote fell well below their general-election level and who failed to gain ground despite being part of the governing majority. The Social Democrats' steady first-place finish confirmed their position as Sweden's anchor party.
The result was widely read at home as a warning sign for the Sweden Democrats and a morale boost for the opposition ahead of the 2026 general election, suggesting that the green and left parties retained considerable strength among Swedish voters even as the right governed. Sweden's delegation joined a European Parliament in which the centre-right held firm and the far right advanced unevenly across member states.
European elections are the textbook example of what political scientists call "second-order" national contests: turnout is far lower than at a general election — 53.39% here against the 80-plus per cent Sweden records for the Riksdag — and with no government directly at stake, voters are freer to reward the party that best expresses a feeling rather than the one they would trust to govern. That logic favours smaller, cause-driven and opposition parties and tends to punish the parties in office. Sweden's 2024 result fits the pattern almost exactly: the Greens, campaigning single-mindedly on climate, surged, while the governing Sweden Democrats slipped well below their national level. Reading the bars above as a forecast of the next general election would therefore overstate both movements.
The clearest way to see that gap is to set this vote against the September 2022 general election. The Greens had scraped in at around five per cent in 2022; here they nearly tripled that share to finish a clear third. The Sweden Democrats, by contrast, had been the largest party of the right in 2022 on more than twenty per cent, yet managed barely thirteen in the European vote. Our 2022 Riksdag page shows the general-election baseline, and the Sweden hub collects every national and European contest since 2018, making the second-order swing easy to trace.
Swedish Election Authority (Valmyndigheten) — val.se.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.