On Monday, Sweden Democrat politician Kent Ekeroth was interviewed by Sveriges Radio about the election results, where the Sweden Democrats are losing ground while the red-green bloc leads in the vote count. Ekeroth claimed that the “immigrant vote” appears to be decisive in the election and elaborated on his reasoning. This led the SR reporter to interrupt him several times and question his conclusions. Among other things, she asserted that Ekeroth knows nothing about how easily citizenship has been granted. When he responded, she wanted him to “drop” the discussion.
– Now you’re using very harsh language, she also said.

The election is not yet decided, but at the time of writing, the Tidö parties seem to be heading toward defeat. The red-green bloc leads with 176 mandates to 173, a difference of about 28,800 votes. The result is still preliminary, since postal and overseas votes have not yet been counted. These are expected to be presented on Wednesday.

In an interview with Sveriges Radio P4 Dalarna, Kent Ekeroth, opposition councilor for the Sweden Democrats in the Dalarna region, was questioned by reporter Anna Hanspers about his views on the election results.

When SR called Ekeroth, who is also the CEO of Samnytt in addition to his political career, to discuss the election results, their interest in his own thoughts seemed limited. Instead, the interview focused on how he expressed himself and what conclusions he believed he could draw as a politician analyzing the election outcome.

Ekeroth: Yes, if it stays this way, it’s a disappointment in Parliament. We’re still just one seat away from being able to take power. If we don’t, then it’s the immigrant vote that decided it, unfortunately. The mobilization…

SR Reporter: But what do you mean now?

Ekeroth: If you look at all the citizenships that have been granted since the government until 2022, it’s 217,000. If you scale that down to those eligible to vote this year, those who vote left, and the usual proportion likely to vote, that would equate to about 46,000 net votes to the left’s advantage.

And now they seem to be leading by 20,000. And if you add the mobilization that’s happened, they might approach 50,000–60,000 votes. So without them, there wouldn’t have been a victory for the left. So it looks like Swedes have given up their own future.

SR Reporter: Isn’t it good if Swedish citizens do their civic duty and go and vote?

Ekeroth: It’s not good if Swedes give up control of their own country to people who got citizenship with their breakfast cereal. People who can’t even speak Swedish.

SR Reporter: You don’t know anything about that, Kent. That’s your opinion.

Ekeroth: I know exactly how carelessly citizenship is handed out in this country.

SR Reporter: If someone has citizenship, then surely they should go vote. That can’t be wrong, even if maybe they received it on false grounds. Can’t we drop this!

Ekeroth: No, we can’t drop it. Because this is what it’s all about.

After this, SR reporter Anna Hanspers tries to interrupt the conversation by saying, “We’re not going to have that discussion here.” Ekeroth insisted that he was answering the questions she had asked him.

Furthermore, the SR reporter took issue with Ekeroth’s use of “very harsh language” when describing foreigners who have obtained Swedish citizenship as “voting cattle.”

SR Reporter: What could you have done differently in the election?

Ekeroth: I think the Tidö parties should have, as their first priority during the mandate period, stopped the granting of 217,000 citizenships.

SR Reporter: But what could you have done differently in this election now?

Ekeroth: It’s hard to say, it’s still very early. But the demographic changes are very decisive and influential. When 80-90 percent vote for the left, it’s hard when you bring in voting cattle from abroad.

SR Reporter: Now you’re using very harsh language. You’re talking about Swedish citizens…

Listen to the Conversation

Hear the full conversation with the reporter below, where Ekeroth answers questions about the election but has little space to elaborate on his positions. The SD politician concludes the video with his own reflections after the conversation.

– We are losing control of our own country, he says.

SVT: Non-European Immigrants Vote Red-Green

Ekeroth’s statement in the SR interview is in line with what party leader Jimmie Åkesson said during the closing party leader debate on Friday. The SD leader then asserted that the election would be decided by immigrant votes.

– I want to say something that someone will probably find incredibly controversial. But I think it’s important. This could be the first election in Sweden where the Muslim immigration we’ve had decides a parliamentary election. Consider that, said Åkesson to the other party leaders.

Åkesson’s statements in the SVT broadcast were also supported by Expo founder Tobias Hübinette, who expanded on the argument in a post on his blog. Hübinette agreed with Åkesson in principle and took the argument further. This was also what Ekeroth referred to during the SR interview:

Thus the Tidö parties and SD’s worst nightmare came true and, given that voters with non-European backgrounds will make up an even larger portion of the electorate in the 2030 election, the right now fears they may never win an election again due to the already prevailing and rapidly increasing (super)diversity within Sweden’s population composition.

– Left-wing researcher Tobias Hübinette

SVT’s exit poll Valu, where 13,709 voters responded anonymously, shows that an overwhelming majority of voters with a non-European background voted for the red-green parties in this year’s election.

According to Tobias Hübinette’s analysis, voters with a foreign background may have played a decisive role in the election result. The group makes up about a quarter of the electorate, and according to the SVT exit poll, about 70 percent of them voted for the opposition parties.

The left-wing researcher thus considers it likely that the Tidö parties would have won if only people with a Swedish majority background had voted. According to the same reasoning, the Tidö parties would also have won if votes from those with Nordic or other European backgrounds were included.

Did Muslims Decide the Election?

An August poll by Novus highlighted by Fokus magazine points to a very strong red-green support among voters who identify as Muslim. The group made up 2.6 percent of respondents, and 85 percent said they would vote for the Social Democrats, the Left Party, or the Greens. Including the Centre Party, the opposition’s support amounted to nearly 86 percent, compared to just over 14 percent for the Tidö parties.

On Monday, SVT’s summary showed only about 28,800 votes separating the blocs, with 176 and 173 mandates, respectively, while postal and overseas votes remained to be counted.

Based on Novus’ vote distribution, the right-liberal opinion site 100% calculated the impact Muslim voters could have had on the result. The calculation shows that about 40,000 votes from Muslim voters represented the entire measured election margin between the blocs. That corresponds to about six out of every thousand voters.

Novus’ numbers also suggest that the number of eligible Muslim voters may be significantly larger. There is no official statistic for religious affiliation, but if the share at 2.6 percent in the survey mirrors the electorate, that would mean about 210,000 eligible voters, according to 100%.

That is more than five times as many as the approximately 40,000 votes which, according to the calculation, would have been enough to equal the election margin. Even with a considerably lower turnout among Muslim voters, there is thus a significant buffer above the required threshold.

Kinnunen Does Not Agree With Ekeroth

After Sveriges Radio’s interview with Kent Ekeroth (SD), his statements that the “immigrant vote” seems to have decided the election, as well as his use of terms such as “voting cattle” from other countries, have made front pages in mainstream media.

This prompted SD Member of Parliament Martin Kinnunen, who also sits on the party board, to enter the debate and signal that he does not share Ekeroth’s assessment.

Kinnunen said he cannot support what he describes as a “defeatist attitude” from Ekeroth and believes the focus should instead be on why the Tidö parties failed to mobilize more voters.

“The bloc difference is marginal. Rather, we should consider why we couldn’t attract at least another 40-50K votes and mobilize better in other districts,” wrote Kinnunen.

Ekeroth in turn responded to Kinnunen on social media:

“Yes, a marginal difference, but if we hadn’t granted 220,000 citizenships, Tidö would have won the election. So, the question is: why make it harder? Why let in half the world only to then ‘attract 50K more votes’? We wouldn’t have had to if we hadn’t granted them citizenship,” Ekeroth stated.

Ekeroth also added in the X debate:

“The ‘marginal difference’ we’ve created completely unnecessarily might give us the Social Democrats for four years. In other words, one big fat disaster. Completely unnecessarily.”

In a comment to Samnytt, Ekeroth repeated the same argument, stating that the Tidö parties would have won the election if this had been stopped.

– Kinnunen doesn’t seem to understand that even if the difference is marginal, 220,000 citizenships made it harder. We would have won. Now maybe we lost. That’s a massive difference.

What the Tidö Parties Could Have Done

Ekeroth, who previously served as a Member of Parliament for the Sweden Democrats, has since the start of the term warned about the trend with citizenships. He has also urged the party to push for a citizenship moratorium—that is, a temporary halt to the issuance of new citizenships.

READ MORE: Ekeroth: “SD – stop issuing new citizenships!”

Already in October 2022, shortly after the Tidö government took office, Ekeroth called on the SD party leadership to work for a halt to new citizenships, arguing that the Swedish people are losing control over their own country.

Since then, year after year and in countless opinion pieces, he has pushed the same demand and reminded the party of the need to act.

I believe that it should be a top priority for the SD to explain to the other coalition parties that this is also in their interest. Everyone knows, as countless studies have shown, that immigrants—especially from the Third World—tend to vote left. So if you won’t stop new citizenships for Sweden’s sake, which would be natural, maybe at least stop them for your own party’s sake.

Every day, a number of people are granted Swedish citizenships that they do not deserve or have a right to. This already today is changing Swedes’ power over their own country, and soon the limit will be reached.

– Kent Ekeroth, autumn 2022

In 2024, SD leader Jimmie Åkesson raised the issue. In an op-ed in Aftonbladet titled “Impose a total stop on new citizenships,” he wrote that the party proposed stopping the issuance of new citizenships in a renegotiation of the Tidö Agreement.

The other Tidö parties, however, showed no interest in the proposal, which then faded away:

A year ago, the moratorium question was one of our proposals in the annual renegotiation of the Tidö Agreement. This received no support at all from any of the governing parties.

– Jimmie Åkesson in Aftonbladet 2024-11-21