Sweden: Magdalena Andersson wins legislative elections, Ulf Kristersson resigns

The left-wing bloc led by social democrat Magdalena Andersson won Sunday's ultra-close legislative elections in Sweden on Thursday, according to a count by the electoral authority. Now that Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has conceded defeat, difficult negotiations are beginning within a very fragmented left-wing bloc to try to form a government.

They have no room for error: the alliance between the right and the far right, which only lost this election by 50,000 votes, is waiting in ambush. With 176 seats, the left bloc is very slightly ahead of that of the right (173), of outgoing conservative Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.

The fifty-year-old has dreamed of a return to the head of government since she left power in 2022. But as a seasoned negotiator, Magdalena Andersson, sometimes presented as a “Swedish Merkel” for her pragmatic and direct side, will have to try to make two parties coexist in the same alliance which sometimes even have difficulty talking to each other. In his camp, his allies from the left party and the centrist party each drew their “red lines” throughout the campaign.

The centrists do not want to see left-wing ministers in government, which the latter nevertheless demand. Magdalena Andersson also does not seem very inclined to bring the left party into government: during the electoral campaign, multiple revelations from the daily Expressen reported party elected officials having made remarks deemed anti-Semitic.

But the opposition leader said she was ready to govern on Sunday. “If this (the results) is confirmed, then Sweden will have a new government,” the 59-year-old social democrat told her supporters. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, one of the rare socialist governments in Europe, welcomed this victory on Thursday on

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson announced his resignation on Thursday after being defeated in the parliamentary elections by Social Democrat Magdalena Andersson. “It is now up to the president of parliament to lead the next steps towards the formation of a new government. So that this work can begin without delay, I hereby request to be removed from my position as Prime Minister,” he wrote in a letter published on his X account.

Ulf Kristersson conceded defeat once the countdown was over. However, the 62-year-old leader could also be tempted to form a government, in the event of the failure of an alliance on the left. To do this, it would need to find other coalition partners, which seems unlikely at this stage. The center party, which it is trying to attract to the right, does not want a government where the extreme right holds ministerial portfolios. However, this is what the outgoing Prime Minister promised the far-right party if he ever won these elections.

The decline of the Sweden Democrats (SD), a far-right party allied with the outgoing government, also remains one of the notable events of the election. For the first time since entering Parliament in 2010, they gave ground: they went from 20.5% in 2022 to 17.5% and returned Mr. Kristersson's moderate right to the position of second political force in the country. Sunday's elections were so close, and the number of ballots higher than usual, that we had to wait an extra day to count the approximately 300,000 missing votes, coming from abroad and from early voting. The results, normally presented Wednesday evening, had to wait until Thursday.