Recently, concern has grown in the red-green ranks. Even voices that were previously confident that the four parties behind Magdalena Andersson will sort out their disagreements have begun to despair and warn of by-elections. On the right, the red-green's disagreements ignite a hope for a comeback for the Tidö parties.
A red-green party that has made such a monumental fiasco that - despite a majority in the Riksdag - it has not been able to form a government, it will be difficult to convince the voters in a new election campaign. Blaming each other does not impress.
And that is precisely why a by-election is so unlikely. The Social Democrats, the Left Party, the Center and the Green Party are struggling to get it together.
It is easy to stare blindly at the current situation and forget that we are still in a fairly early phase of government formation. After the 2018 election, it was even more locked in at this time. The first prime ministerial vote did not take place until mid-November. After that, it took another two weeks for the Center to even accept the idea of negotiating with the Social Democrats. And then two more votes were required before Sweden got a government.
Even then, the conflict appeared as "digital" - but was resolved when time shrunk and the by-election knocked on the door. When conversations start and many questions are put on the table, there is always somewhere to start sleuthing and agree - what just appeared digital and impossible turns instead into a gray scale. There are many stops on the road between heaven and hell.
Minister of State or not Minister of State may seem impossible to compromise on, but once one has accepted to assign a position with the title of Minister of State to a party, there are lots of levels. You can write texts about looking for solutions "in the middle". That the parties celebrate the DCA agreement with the USA. And so on. Imagination sets the limit.
Everyone wants to take a big scalp from the negotiation table and everyone needs to be able to show that they have forced the other parties to back down on issues of the heart.
But of course it can go down the drain. It cannot be ruled out that the party strategists clash and misread each other.
Take, for example, the Left Party's demands for ministerial posts. The party has a congressional decision that binds the party leadership to vote no to all governments the party is not in.
The V leadership's message is therefore that it cannot back down even if it wanted to – the party has put it on autopilot and thrown the steering wheel out the windshield.
But let's say that S, MP and C offer things like cheap dental care, higher unemployment insurance and better pensions in exchange for V giving up positions in the government. And that in a fourth and decisive prime minister vote you have to choose between this - or a re-election that will most likely lead to a Tidö government.
Do the other parties think that the Left Party dares to press red in such a situation? The V voters stand further from Tidö than some other voters, and would probably punish the party if Dadgostar gives the right another chance.
If the parties start engaging in that kind of game, pure misjudgments can trigger a by-election. A sort of small-scale equivalent to when misunderstandings between the superpowers came close to triggering nuclear war.
So far, the warnings about by-elections are mostly political spin. Or rather: Two spins. The one from the Social Democrats who want to force compromises. The S leadership still hopes to keep V out of the government. The other from the right, which has an obvious vested interest in the matter.
The parties behind Magdalena Andersson may not be united by love - but by the fear of by-elections.
