2022 Swedish general election

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources:  –  ·  ·  · scholar · JSTOR (September 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

2022 Swedish general election

← 2018 11 September 2022 2026 →
All 349 seats to the Riksdag 175 seats are needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Leader Magdalena Andersson Ulf Kristersson Jimmie Åkesson Party Social Democratic Moderate Sweden Democrats Alliance — M–KD collaboration — Leader since 4 November 2021 1 October 2017 7 May 2005 Leader's seat Stockholm Södermanland Jönköping Last election 100 seats, 28.3% 70 seats, 19.8% 62 seats, 17.5% Current seats 100 70 62   Leader Annie Lööf Nooshi Dadgostar Ebba Busch Party Centre Left Christian Democrats Alliance Confidence and supply to Andersson Cabinet Confidence and supply to Andersson Cabinet M–KD collaboration Leader since 23 September 2011 31 October 2020 25 April 2015 Leader's seat Jönköping Stockholm Västra Götaland Last election 31 seats, 8.6% 28 seats, 8.0% 22 seats, 6.3% Current seats 31 27 22   Leader Nyamko Sabuni Märta Stenevi Per Bolund Party Liberals Green Alliance — Confidence and supply to Andersson Cabinet Leader since 28 June 2019 31 January 2021 4 May 2019 Leader's seat — — Stockholm Municipality Last election 20 seats, 5.5% 16 seats, 4.4% Current seats 20 16
Largest party by constituency (left) and municipality (right)
Incumbent Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson Social Democratic

General elections will be held in Sweden on 11 September 2022^[a] to elect the 349 members of the Riksdag.^[2] They in turn will elect the Prime Minister of Sweden.^[b] Under the constitution, regional and municipal elections will also be held on the same day.

In Sweden, national (and regional/local) elections are part of a four-year cycle and will be held regardless as, should there be cause for snap elections, the regular quadrennial cycle remains uninterrupted.

Contesting parties[]

Parliamentary parties[]

The Social Democratic Party (S; Socialdemokraterna) is the largest political party in the Swedish Riksdag, with 100 of the 349 seats. It was the senior partner in the minority coalition Löfven Cabinet, governing with the Green Party. Party leader Stefan Löfven was Prime Minister of Sweden from 2014 to 2021. Löfven resigned as party chairman and PM in November 2021. He was succeeded by Minister for Finance Magdalena Andersson, who was highly popular with the electorate as well as with the party leadership.^[3][4] Andersson was elected party leader on 4 November 2021 and Prime Minister on 29 November, leading a single-party minority government of the Social Democrats with support from the Centre, Left, and Green parties. She is Sweden's first female Prime Minister.^[5]

The Moderate Party (M; Moderaterna) is the second-largest party in the Riksdag with 70 seats. It last governed under Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, from 2006 until 2014. The party used to be the leading member of the defunct Alliance. Its current leader, Ulf Kristersson, was tasked with forming a government by speaker Andreas Norlén after the inconclusive 2018 election. However, he failed to do so after the Centre Party and the Liberals, his former partners in the Alliance, refused to co-operate with SD in order to make him prime minister and instead signed an agreement with a new Social Democratic government on confidence and supply.

The Sweden Democrats (SD; Sverigedemokraterna) is the third-largest party in the Riksdag with 62 seats. Until 2018, all other parties represented in the Riksdag had repeatedly refused to co-operate with them due to their perceived extremism. Nevertheless, they voted with the Alliance parties to force a motion of no confidence against Prime Minister Löfven after the 2018 election and supported Ulf Kristersson as Prime Minister, urging fellow parties to form a "Conservative bloc" together with the Moderates and Christian Democrats.

The Centre Party (C; Centerpartiet) is the fourth-largest party in the Riksdag with 31 seats. It was represented in the Reinfeldt cabinet from 2006 to 2014, and is a member party of the Alliance. The Centre Party has been led by Annie Lööf since 2011. Prime Minister Löfven has repeatedly attempted to win the parliamentary support of the Centre Party, but the party traditionally leans towards the Moderate policy positions and stayed within the Alliance after the 2014 election. Following the 2018 election the Centre Party supported Löfven as prime minister in an agreement where the Social Democrats had to make concessions in certain political areas.

The Left Party (V; Vänsterpartiet) is the fifth-largest party in the Riksdag with 27 seats. Its current leader is Nooshi Dadgostar. The Left Party has traditionally supported all Social Democratic governments in parliament, but has never been part of the ruling coalition. In a shift, on 21 June 2021, it withdrew its support for the current Social Democratic government.^[1] The party won 28 seats in the 2018 election, but currently has 27, for Amineh Kakabaveh left the party while retaining her seat. The Left Party supports the government but has together with the Moderate Party and the Christian Democrats gotten multiple bills through and on a few occasions threatened to declare no confidence in ministers, among them the Minister of Labour Eva Nordmark.^[6]

The Christian Democrats (KD; Kristdemokraterna) is the sixth-largest party in the Riksdag with 22 seats. It has been led by Ebba Busch since 2015. Despite polling steadily below the 4% threshold for parliamentary representation between 2014-2018 the party saw a resurgence in support immediately prior to the election, guaranteeing its representation in the Riksdag.

The Liberals (L; Liberalerna) is the seventh-largest party in the Riksdag with 20 seats. It was represented in the Reinfeldt cabinet from 2006 to 2014. The party has been led by Nyamko Sabuni since 2019. Following the 2018 election the Liberals support prime minister Löfven as prime minister in an agreement where the Social Democrats has had to make concessions in certain political areas. After the 2021 Swedish government crisis, the party withdrew its support for Löfven, and is now promoting a centre-right government with Ulf Kristersson as Prime Minister.

The Green Party (MP; Miljöpartiet) is the eighth-largest party in the Riksdag with 16 seats. The Green Party was the minor partner of the Löfven Cabinet, alongside the Social Democrats, but withdrew from government during the formation of the Andersson Cabinet. It is the only Swedish party to have two spokespersons.

Minor parties[]

Parties with less than 4% of the vote are not represented in the Riksdag.

Feminist Initiative (FI; Feministiskt Initiativ) is the country's ninth-largest party, and was represented in the European Parliament from 2014 to 2019. The party received 0.46% of the vote in the 2018 general election, down from 3.12% in the 2014 election.

The Alternative for Sweden (Alternativ för Sverige), led by Gustav Kasselstrand, is the country's tenth-largest party. It was formed by members expelled from the Sweden Democrats after they cut ties with their former youth organization. The party was represented in the 2014-2018 Riksdag by a number of defectors who had originally been elected as Sweden Democrats, but the party failed to achieve representation after the 2018 election, receiving 0.31% of the vote.

Electoral system[]

The Swedish Riksdag is made up of 349 MPs, and all are elected through open list proportional representation on multi-member party lists that are either regional (most major parties) or national (Sweden Democrats). Each of the 29 constituencies has a set number of parliamentarians that is divided through constituency results to ensure regional representation. The other MPs are then elected through a proportional balancing, to ensure that the numbers of elected MPs for the various parties accurately represent the votes of the electorate. The Swedish constitution (Regeringsformen) 1 Ch. 4 § says that the Riksdag is responsible for taxation and making laws, and 1 Ch. 6 § says that the government is held responsible to the Riksdag. This means that Sweden has parliamentarism in a constitutional monarchy—ensuring that the government is responsible to the people's representatives. A minimum of 4% of the national vote (or, alternatively, 12% or more within a constituency) is required for a party to enter the Riksdag. Were the latter to occur, the party only gains representation within that constituency's seat share.

Vote secrecy and party-specific ballots[]

In Swedish elections, voters may openly pick up several party-specific ballots, and then, in the voting booth, mark the ballot they chose. Two election observers of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) present at the 2018 general election criticized this system, saying that it could endanger ballot secrecy, and that they would look into the issue in the report that was to be published eight weeks later.^[7]

Election officials are responsible for party-specific ballot papers being present in the voting places for parties that have obtained more than one percent of the votes in the previous parliamentary election.^[8] A voter may write in the party name of choice on a blank ballot paper to cast a vote if there is no access to the desired party-specific ballot paper.^[9]

Parties[]

The table below lists parties currently represented in the Riksdag.

Opinion polls[]

See also[]

• Politics of Sweden
• History of Sweden (1991–present)

Notes[]

References[]