After experiencing unprecedented success in Swedish politics, the Sweden Democrats hit a wall in this year’s election. The party lost more than one in seven of its voters and is no longer the second largest party. What happened?
According to the preliminary vote count on Monday afternoon, the Sweden Democrats received 17.5 percent of the votes. This would mean a drop of a full three percentage points compared to the 2022 election.
At the same time, the Moderate Party has increased its support and taken over the position as the second largest party after the Social Democrats — who, despite finishing first, have made their worst election performance since universal suffrage was introduced.
READ ALSO: Did Non-European Immigrants Give the Opposition the Win?
The big winner of the election is the Left Party, which, despite recurring scandals involving terror glorification and anti-Semitism — and parallel election campaigns in languages such as Arabic and Somali — managed to mobilize many non-European immigrants.
One Left Party politician who did her best to court immigrant voters is Hanna Gunnarsson:
It also seems to have turned out just as many feared — that Swedes no longer decide elections in their own country.
Rinkeby is just one of many examples of how it looked in several immigrant-dense areas:
30,000 Votes Separate the Blocks
176 mandates for the opposition and 173 mandates for the Tidö parties. That’s the current tally as of Monday afternoon. The difference is only about 30,000 votes.
“Other parties” are currently at 1.6 percent — roughly the same as in 2022. How many votes each party — for example, the Örebro Party — has received remains unclear for now.
In Örebro specifically, it can be seen that the Sweden Democrats have lost voters to the Örebro Party. According to Fria Tider, it can already be established that the Örebro Party, together with Alternative for Sweden, has gained more than 28,600 votes — roughly the same number as that which gives the opposition its edge.
Imported Left-Wing Voters
During the Tidö government’s tenure, 190,000 immigrants have received Swedish citizenship. Most in 2023 and 2024 came from Syria, Afghanistan, and Eritrea. Of these, just under 30 percent were children, meaning 137,000 new voters have been imported, who by a very high margin — 70 percent — vote for the left. Thus, the Tidö government may have given the left 95,000 additional votes.
There is speculation that it may have been the lack of a stricter immigration policy that led many former SD voters to abandon the party in favor of, among others, the Örebro Party. In the media, however, other theories are put forward. In Aftonbladet, political scientist Anders Sannerstedt speculates that it could have been an excessively strict immigration policy that caused the party to lose voters.
The final result is expected later this week, once the votes from Swedes abroad have also been counted.