Sweden's general election on Sunday poses a question with uncomfortable implications: should a party founded by neo-Nazis sit in government? More than eight million registered voters will decide whether Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson's centre-right coalition continues in office, and whether the Sweden Democrats, which propped up his minority administration from outside, finally earn cabinet posts.
The election is not primarily a contest of policies. Crime has fallen. Inflation has fallen. What voters are arguing about is the composition of the next government, and specifically whether the Sweden Democrats, who took 20.5 per cent of the vote in 2022 to become the largest party on the right, deserve a place at the cabinet table.
Kristersson has governed since 2022 with a three-party coalition of his own Moderates, the Liberals and the Christian Democrats, reliant on the Sweden Democrats for a parliamentary majority through a confidence-and-supply arrangement. In April, he announced that the Sweden Democrats would be brought into government if the right wins a majority. He would remain prime minister even if the Sweden Democrats outpoll his own party.
Facing him is Magdalena Andersson, who led Sweden briefly in 2021 before losing power at the last election. Her Social Democrats have dominated Swedish politics since the Second World War, and opinion polls have shown the centre-left bloc ahead for much of the past four years. But the campaign has been, by expert assessment, defensive and incoherent.
"Crime has come down, inflation has come down. So these topics are not really what people discuss," said Zeth Isaksson, a sociologist specialising in electoral behaviour at Stockholm University. "People discuss who is going to be in government, and that's what the election is about."
A bloc system that rewards alliances
Sweden's 349-seat Riksdag is elected through proportional representation with a 4 per cent threshold. The country has two competing blocs: four parties on the right and four on the left. The question is not which single party wins the most votes but which alliance can assemble a governing majority.
Nicholas Aylott, associate professor of political science at Södertörn University, noted that it "would be a sensation if the opposition parties, having been ahead in the opinion polls pretty much for four years since the last election, didn't now win a majority." Yet he also observed that the Social Democrats' "extremely defensive" campaign may have cost them support, leaving voters uncertain about why they should back the party.
From the margins to the cabinet table
The Sweden Democrats' journey from fringe extremism to the threshold of government is a case study in how European populist parties have normalised themselves. Founded in the 1980s by people with backgrounds in right-wing extremist movements, including neo-Nazis, the party spent years as a marginal force. Under Jimmie Åkesson, who took over in 2005, it expelled openly racist members, softened its rhetoric and steadily built support.
The 2022 result made the Sweden Democrats the largest party on the right. For the past four years it has supported Kristersson's government from outside, accepting influence without ministerial posts. That arrangement now appears to have run its course. Åkesson's party wants seats at the cabinet table, and Kristersson has conceded the point.
Aylott said there is "some, I won't say fear, but trepidation, apprehension about the possibility of Sweden Democrat ministers," and the Social Democrats have tried to exploit that unease in the campaign's final stretch.
A Russian interference allegation at the worst moment
Sweden's recent accession to NATO, completed in 2024, makes the election sensitive beyond Stockholm. The decision to abandon two centuries of non-alignment was taken under Andersson's government after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and concluded under Kristersson. There is near-total consensus across Swedish politics on supporting Ukraine and opposing Moscow.
That consensus makes a late-campaign allegation particularly awkward. Expo magazine reported that a civil servant working in parliament for the Sweden Democrats had spread Russian state narratives on social media. The civil servant is the partner of Gustav Gellerbrant, who heads the party's coordination office with the government. Gellerbrant said the posts were taken out of context and were intended as irony. He announced he would take parental leave to avoid distracting from the campaign.
Kristersson said "there is no room for pro-Russian narratives in Sweden" and welcomed Gellerbrant's decision. Sweden's Psychological Defense Agency has assessed that the election is not a primary target for Russian interference, partly because the cross-party consensus on Ukraine reduces Moscow's incentive to intervene.
Has the Sweden Democrats peaked?
Even if the right loses, the Sweden Democrats are likely to remain a substantial parliamentary force. But Isaksson suggested the party may have reached its ceiling, arguing that the election could reinforce the impression that the Sweden Democrats "have peaked to some extent." If so, the question for Åkesson is whether entering government, with the compromises that entails, arrests or accelerates that decline.
The broader European context matters. Populist right parties have gained ground in several countries, most recently in a German state election. Sweden's election will be read as another data point on whether such parties can translate vote share into durable governing power, or whether the act of governing erodes their appeal.
What the election decides
The 349 seats in the Riksdag will be allocated based on Sunday's vote. If the centre-left bloc wins a majority, Andersson returns as prime minister and the Sweden Democrats return to opposition. If the right holds, Kristersson stays, and the Sweden Democrats enter government for the first time, bringing a party with far-right origins into the executive of a NATO member state of 10.6 million people.
The result will shape Sweden's approach to its still-new NATO membership, its relationship with the European Union, and domestic policy on immigration and crime. But the immediate consequence is simpler: whether a party that began with neo-Nazis in the 1980s is trusted with ministerial office.
People mentioned
Organisations
Sweden Democrats · Swedish Social Democratic Party · Moderate Party · North Atlantic Treaty Organization · Riksdag
