You would think it’s a sort of self-explanatory thing, right? Well, you would be wrong, as Sweden has a fairly complex seven-step process for casting your votes.
Voters take pick ballots from a station with many available options. Yellow ballots are for the national parliament, Riksdag, white for the municipal assembly, and blue for the region assembly.
It’s complicated, so let me just point you towards the official guidance on how it’s meant to work:
Voters then take three ballot envelopes, stick their ballot inside, close them, and take it to a polling staff member who checks your name on the voters’ register, crosses you out, and then drops them into the ballot box.
Easy, right?
There are 349 seats in the parliament, so theoretically it’s a race to 175 when it comes to securing a majority in the Riksdag. But it’s a bit more complicated than that.
It’s a proportional representation system, but to get in, you need to clear a 4% threshold – and that is particularly relevant for the Liberal party, which the current PM is likely to need to stay in power.
The party long polled well before the threshold, but surged in recent days, helped by their leader’s strong performances in TV debates and what is believed to be some tactical voting among the supporters of the “blue” bloc as they want to make sure they make it into the parliament.
We are expecting eight parties to be in the next parliament and this level of fragmentation can make government formation a bit tricky at times. But in theory they are divided in two blocks – blue and red – which are expected to come to some sort of agreement, if needed.
It’s also worth remembering that Sweden has a long history of minority governments.
“Sweden has a tradition of minority governments,” Aylott explains, with the concept of “negative parliamentarism.”
“If there’s a prime minister proposed, then if there is the absence of an absolute majority in parliament against the proposal, it’s interpreted as support. So a party that doesn’t really want to give full support to this proposed candidate – maybe because it’s not going to be part of the coalition, but which can just about live with it, and doesn’t have a better alternative – it can abstain from the vote, and that’s counted as passive support. This makes it much easier to form minority governments.”
Aylott continues:
“But it’s it’s worth remembering that nearly every, almost by definition, minority government eventually rests on a parliamentary majority, and these parliamentary majorities are usually not always, but usually fairly stable.
This was the story of the last four years, with a minority government, but they had a very elaborate Tidö deal with the Sweden Democrats, which meant that there was a de facto majority in parliament.
So, minority governments aren’t as fragile, usually at least, as they look.”
Since you may not be ordinarily following the Swedish politics very closely, let me bring you up to speed on some of the key aspect of this year’s election.
Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer at Södertörn University in Stockholm, joined me over coffee earlier to offer some commentary to help us make sense of it.
The polls opened at 8am local time (7am UK) and will close 12 hours later, at 8pm local time (7pm UK).
And it is at 8pm local time when we should get the results of the Swedish public broadcaster SVT’s polling station survey, and a separate poll commissioned by private broadcaster TV4.
We should start getting first actual results not long after that and as the night goes on, we should be moving to on a firmer ground (he says hopefully).
For what it’s worth, SVT is hoping to release its “super forecast” with expected election result at some point after 9pm local time (8pm UK).
Don’t expect the party leaders to rush to stage for their victory speeches before we get a clear(er) sense of what is going on.
Understandably, we focus on the general election, but it’s worth noting that the local elections to regional and municipal councils are also held on the same day, and so voters get as many as three ballots in total.
in Stockholm
Hej, that’s hello in Swedish, from Stockholm, where I spent this morning eating Swedish pastry and meatballs talking to voters about the country’s prospects as they cast their votes in today’s parliamentary elections.
Here is what they told me, straight from Stockholm:
in Stockholm
We kick off our coverage of the 2026 Swedish parliamentary election which could see the far right enter government for the first time if the country’s rightwing parties can form a majority – or a new centre-left government take control instead.
As our Nordic correspondent Miranda Bryant noted in her preview,
“In 2022, the current prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, the leader of the centre-right Moderates, broke a longstanding taboo to make a deal with the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD), so that his minority coalition could form a government.
That agreement gave the SD outsized influence over government policy, especially on crime and immigration, and Kristersson has now gone further, promising ministerial posts for the SD if he is returned to power.”
The opposition “red” bloc is led by former prime minister Magdalena Andersson of the Social Democrats, but their lead has narrowed considerably in the final days of the campaign to less than one percentage point.
It could be a very, very close race.
The polls opened 8am local time and will close 8pm local time (7pm UK), when we should have two exit polls – conducted by Swedish broadcaster SVT and TV4 – for you.
A further projection will be published by public broadcaster SVT about an hour later, as we start getting actual results.
We could be in for a long night, but hope you will join us for lots of colour from Stockholm, the last hours of the campaign trail, and obviously the results.
Good evening.
