Kristersson resigns after Sweden's left takes 176 seats

Sweden's Election Authority closed the count on Thursday and gave the four-party left bloc 176 seats in the 349-member Riksdag. The four parties that backed outgoing prime minister Ulf Kristersson took 173. The gap was 50,359 votes in a country of 10.6 million people.

Kristersson posted a letter to the speaker the same afternoon. He asked to be relieved of the office of prime minister so that formal talks could start at once. "Now it is the speaker who will lead the next stage of the way to a new government," he wrote.

Magdalena Andersson, who led the Social Democrats as prime minister until 2022, is the candidate most likely to try to form the next cabinet. Her party remains the largest single group, with 99 seats and about 28 percent of the vote. That is still the Social Democrats' weakest general-election result in more than a century. They lost eight seats.

Public broadcaster SVT published the rest of the left tally as follows: Left Party 30, Centre Party 25, Greens 22. On the right, the Moderates took 70 seats and about 19.9 percent. The Sweden Democrats fell to 62 seats and 17.5 percent of the vote, a drop of 11 seats and their first loss of support in a general election since they entered the Riksdag in 2010. The Christian Democrats took 22 and the Liberals 19.

The Sweden Democrats had hoped to sit in cabinet for the first time. Kristersson had invited them to take ministries if his bloc held. That offer is now void. The far-right party drops from second to third in the chamber.

Andersson told Swedish news agency TT that voters had chosen "a new direction for our country, voted for cohesion and against division." She named climate policy, schools, healthcare, elderly care and immigration as the files she wants on the table. She invited the Left, Centre and Green parties to opening talks on Thursday.

Those talks are the real story. The Left Party wants ministers. The liberal Centre Party has said it cannot sit in a cabinet that includes the Left. The same fracture delayed government formation after the 2018 election, when talks ran for almost 20 weeks. The earliest date a new prime minister can be sworn in is 29 September. Nothing in Thursday's arithmetic forces a deal by then.

Sweden joined NATO in 2024. The incoming government, whoever leads it, inherits that membership, a raised defence budget and a Baltic neighbourhood that includes Belarusian drills this week on the edge of the Suwałki Gap. The campaign itself was fought mainly on crime, gang violence and migration. Those files do not disappear because the seat count flipped by three.

The count itself dragged because Sunday's election left large piles of late advance ballots and overseas votes. Preliminary figures shifted for four days. Only when the last boxes were in did Kristersson resign. He remains in office in a caretaker role until the speaker completes the consultation round with party leaders.

Andersson does not have a personal majority. She needs all three partners, or she needs at least one of them to abstain in a confidence vote while the others supply votes. Either path gives a three-seat cushion that can vanish with a single defection or a sick-list on a tight bill.

The Social Democrats governed Sweden for most of the twentieth century. That memory still shapes how the other parties bargain. Centre voters remember Left budgets. Left voters remember Centre tax cuts. Green voters remember both. The speaker's first job is to test whether any of those memories can be parked for four years.

If the talks fail, Sweden can run a minority cabinet, call a fresh election, or try a cross-bloc arrangement that neither leader advertised this month. Thursday's numbers close the campaign. They do not close the government file.