Global Information2022 Swedish general election information
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All 349 seats in the Riksdag 175 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Turnout | 84.2% ( 2.9pp) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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General elections were held in Sweden on 11 September 2022 to elect the 349 members of the Riksdag who in turn elected the Prime Minister of Sweden. Under the constitution, regional and municipal elections were also held on the same day. The preliminary results presented on 15 September showed the government parties lost their majority, which were confirmed by the final results published on 17 September. After a month of negotiations following the elections that led to the Tidö Agreement among the right-wing bloc, Moderate Party (M) leader Ulf Kristersson was elected prime minister on 17 October. The Kristersson Cabinet is a minority government that relies on confidence and supply from the Sweden Democrats (SD).
Following the 2018 Swedish general election, the Swedish Social Democratic Party (S) under Prime Minister Stefan Löfven formed a government with the Green Party (MP), while the Centre Party (C), the Left Party (V), and the Liberals (L) abstained during the vote of confidence on 18 January 2019. The Alliance, in which C and L had participated since 2004, was effectively dissolved; by late 2021, an informal right-wing alliance was formed by M with Kristersson as the prime ministerial candidate of a would-be government including the Christian Democrats (KD) with the support of L and SD. Löfven governed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden, even as his government was briefly dismissed due to a no-confidence vote initiated by V in June 2021 over rent controls; he resigned from all political offices in November 2021. Magdalena Andersson, Sweden's former Minister for Finance, succeeded him and led the Andersson Cabinet from that time on, with C, V, and MP providing confidence and supply for the government.
The campaign period was met with issues regarding the accession of Sweden to NATO due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as crime, energy, the economy, and immigration. Parliamentary parties campaigned through July and August, while in late August SD surpassed M in opinion polls. Exit polls showed that S and its confidence-and-supply parties had a narrow lead against the right-leaning bloc (SD, M, KD, L). During the counting of the preliminary results and later on, Sweden's Election Authority said that the right-leaning bloc overtook the left-leaning bloc (S, V, C, MP) by three seats. Andersson conceded the election three days later, and resigned the day after that.
The election saw massive swings between the two blocs in different regions. The left-leaning bloc won the most votes in large cities and several university towns with unprecedented massive margins. This included major relative gains across the capital region and also flipping two suburban municipalities in Stockholm County. Meanwhile, the right managed to overturn dozens of municipalities that had historically been dominated by S, especially in the central interior Bergslagen region. In this historically industrial area, the county of Dalarna was won by the right-leaning coalition for the first time in history, while the left held on by just 373 votes in Värmland. Likewise, some municipalities that the outright leftist parties (S, V, MP) had won with an overall majority of 50 points in the 1994 Swedish general election, flipped to the right.
Major gains in minority were also made by the right-leaning bloc in northern Sweden, leading the vote in eight municipalities compared to none four years prior. In the lower east, the historically leftist swing counties Kalmar, Södermanland, Västmanland, and Östergötland all went to the right to seal the majority. S won 30% of the popular vote, with a net increase in spite of the election loss. SD became the second-largest party with above 20% of the popular vote, surpassing M at 19%. The blocs were separated by a thin margin of about half a percentage point. The parties aligned with the outgoing government did somewhat better in the regional and municipal elections.