Why do men in Sweden vote for the right and women for the left?

Back in the Social Democrats’ heyday in the middle of the last century the party routinely scooped 40 to 50 percent of the vote in national elections.

Nowadays the mere idea of a social democratic party in Europe performing so well seems the stuff of fantasy. But if women had their way, Sweden’s traditional party of government would in fact stand a chance of once again scaling those heights.

Every year the Swedish statistics agency asks citizens which party they would vote for if an election were held today. In the 2025 edition of what is Sweden’s most comprehensive political survey, 41.7 percent of women said the Social Democrats would get their vote compared to 30.7 percent of men.

And although the numbers are smaller, the pattern is repeated for the other parties most strongly associated with traditional left-wing politics. The Left Party enjoyed the support of 8.1 percent of women compared to 6.1 percent of men, while the Green Party scored 7.9 percent from women and 5.1 percent from men.

In other words, if only women’s votes counted the Social Democrat leader Magdalena Andersson would easily be able to cobble together a coalition that didn’t even need the support of the party’s more right-wing ally, the Centre Party (6 percent women, 5 percent men).

The difference gets more striking the further right you go. Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s Moderates are determined to win back urban female voters but for now just 16.7 percent of women back the prime minister’s party compared to 19.8 percent of men.

The gap is widest among supporters of the far-right Sweden Democrats, which enjoys the backing of 24.4 percent of men but just 11.7 percent of women.

But why do women lean so strongly towards the left in Sweden? The discrepancy can partly be explained by differing priorities, says Elias Markstedt, a political scientist at Gothenburg University who has carried out research on the gender gap in Swedish politics.

“Women tend to prioritize healthcare, elder care, welfare-type topics, as opposed to men who tend to prioritize security, criminal policy, and maybe lower taxes,” he explains.

But it wasn’t always like this, says Markstedt. In fact, the roles were reversed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when women favoured more conservative parties.

And it wasn’t just in Sweden either. The voting patterns of men and women have also flipped in countries like the US, UK and Germany.
“This is one of the more fascinating aspects of the gender gap,” he says.

Markstedt says political scientists attribute the turnabout to two main factors: work and religion.

“In Sweden we saw this change pretty early on, earlier than the UK, Germany and Italy, and this maybe has to do with labour market participation. Women started to work somewhat earlier in Sweden than in the UK, for example.”

As women increasingly faced a “double pressure” to earn money and take care of children, they became ever more invested in a welfare state that eased some of the burden.

Another reason why the voter gender gap is especially wide in Sweden can be linked to a segregated labour market, says Markstedt. Women are massively overrepresented in a public sector that’s larger than in most comparable countries.

And as for religion, women started losing theirs as the 20th century drew to a close.

“Women tended to be more religious than men and parties on the right tended to have politics that linked up with religious ideas”.

But as women in Sweden gradually became more secularised than men, they switched their political allegiances accordingly.

As for why so many men have turned to the far right, Markstedt says he’s not convinced by the argument that there’s a “cultural backlash” against women gaining more power in society.

Instead, one explanation for women’s antipathy towards the Sweden Democrats might simply be that women are generally more pro-immigration than men, “and that’s been the case for a very long time”.

In a fractious political era, it’s conceivable that the Swedish gender gap could continue to widen.

“I think it can still increase a bit more,” says Markstedt.

But, he adds, the demographic pie can be sliced in many different ways and the similarities between men and women outweigh their differences. Categories like class and level of educational attainment “have greater explanatory power.”

“But I think what's interesting is why we see these gender differences now. It says something about how people work and how politics works.”

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