Sweden General election 2018 — Results

At a glance

Sweden's general election of 9 September 2018 produced one of the most deadlocked parliaments in the country's modern history and confirmed the breakdown of the two-bloc politics that had structured Swedish elections for a generation. The governing Social Democrats (Socialdemokraterna) of Prime Minister Stefan Löfven remained the largest party but fell to 28.26% and 100 of the 349 seats — their weakest result since universal suffrage was introduced in 1921. The centre-right Moderate Party (Moderaterna) took 19.84% and 70 seats, while the nationalist, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna) surged to 17.53% and 62 seats, cementing their place as the third force and the disruptive pivot of Swedish politics. Turnout was an exceptionally high 87.18%.

How the vote works

The Riksdag is a unicameral parliament of 349 members elected for fixed four-year terms by party-list proportional representation. Seats are allocated by the modified Sainte-Laguë method across 29 multi-member constituencies, with 310 fixed constituency seats topped up by 39 nationwide adjustment seats (utjämningsmandat) that make the overall result almost perfectly proportional. To share in the seats a party must clear a 4% national threshold (or 12% in a single constituency). Voting is administered by the Election Authority (Valmyndigheten), and the regional (region) and municipal (kommun) councils are elected on the same day, making it a single national polling day every four years.

The campaign trail

The campaign was dominated by immigration and integration in the aftermath of the 2015 refugee crisis, when Sweden received more asylum seekers per capita than any other EU country, as well as by law and order, gang violence and the future of the welfare state and health service. The Sweden Democrats, long treated as a pariah by the mainstream parties, pushed migration to the centre of debate and forced both the Social Democrat-led red-green bloc and the four-party centre-right Alliance to harden their positions. The central, unresolved question of the campaign was how — or whether — to deal with a party that now commanded one vote in six.

The outcome

The two traditional blocs finished in a near-perfect tie: the red-greens (Social Democrats, Greens and Left Party) won 144 seats and the Alliance (Moderates, Centre, Liberals and Christian Democrats) 143, leaving the Sweden Democrats' 62 seats holding the balance but excluded by both. The Centre Party rose to 8.61%, the Left Party to 8.00%, the Christian Democrats took 6.32%, the Liberals 5.49% and the Greens scraped over the threshold at 4.41%. With no bloc able to command a majority and neither willing to govern with or rely on the Sweden Democrats, Sweden entered the longest government-formation crisis in its history.

What followed

It took 134 days, two failed prime-ministerial votes and the fall of Löfven's government in a no-confidence motion before a solution emerged. In January 2019 the Social Democrats and Greens struck the "January Agreement" (Januariavtalet) with the Centre Party and the Liberals — who broke from the Alliance — on a programme of market-liberal reforms, with the Left Party reluctantly tolerating the arrangement. Löfven was re-elected prime minister at the head of a minority government. The deal shattered the old Alliance, drew the Centre and Liberals away from any cooperation with the Sweden Democrats, and set the stage for the realignment that would deliver power to the right in 2022.

Where the data comes from

Swedish Election Authority (Valmyndigheten) — val.se.

Compiled and reviewed from official results by ElectioMap. See our data methodology.