Sweden’s ruling centre-left bloc won 144 seats in the 349-seat parliament in last week’s election to 143 for the centre-right, with 175 needed for a majority. The Sweden Democrats, the rightwing nationalist party that has roots in the neo-Nazi movement, have 62 seats.
The Social Democrats came in first place with 28.3 per cent of the votes, their worst result in more than a century. The Moderates, the leading centre-right party, came second with 19.8 per cent. The Sweden Democrats, which had no seats in parliament until 2010, secured 17.5 per cent of the votes, but made less of a breakthrough than polls had suggested.
The Social Democrats and Moderates are the main losers, compared with the previous election. The Sweden Democrats are the biggest gainers from 2014.
Any attempt at forming a government is likely to be lengthy and complicated as the chief rivals to the Swedish Democrats have ruled out entering into coalition with the populist rightwing party. Sweden’s government doesn’t need to have a majority in favour of it as long as there is no majority against it.
The election campaign was dominated by immigration, law and order and the future of Sweden’s generous welfare state. The prosperous Scandinavian country admitted 163,000 refugees and migrants in 2015, taking in more immigrants relative to its population than almost any other European country. That fuelled support for the Sweden Democrats.
Stefan Lofven, the centre-left prime minister who has presided over an economic upswing, has refused calls to step down, saying he would try to cobble together a viable coalition. The leader of the centre-right opposition, Ulf Kristersson, has said he will not allow Mr Lofven to continue to rule a minority coalition, but he can form a government only if the Sweden Democrats don’t vote against him.
Sweden has no tradition of Germany-style grand coalitions.
© European Union 2016 – European Parliament. (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons license)
