In some ways the most surprising result of the election is that the three government parties, the Moderates, Christian Democrats, and Liberals, all increased their share of the vote compared to 2022, while the far-right Sweden Democrats lost 3 percentage points and the left-wing Social Democrats lost 2 percentage points. How do you explain the government parties' success?
Nicholas Aylott: That's a difficult one. All the parties went forward except for the Sweden Democrats and the Social Democrats, which is a remarkable outcome of the election. I suspect there is an awful lot of vote-churning going on here. I think parties have been gaining votes from various sources and then losing them to various sources and in the end, only the Sweden Democrats and the Social Democrats got a net loss in this process.
But it is difficult to explain the advance of the government parties, particularly the party of the prime minister [The Moderates], after a period in which the Swedish economy has been struggling, until only very recently when it has started to pick up.
Individually, you can understand why there was a rush towards the Liberals at the last minute. It was about strategic voting to keep them in parliament.
I can imagine that the Christian Democrats also attracted some voters from across the other bloc. The very conciliatory attitude shown by the Christian Democrats leader during the campaign towards the Social Democrats may have attracted some votes from her camp over to the Christian Democrats. People like that sort of practical, constructive, friendly approach. She hasn't always shown that, the leader of the Christian Democrats, but she did this time.
So on an individual basis you can explain why certain parties went forward, but to try to explain why all the government parties did, and still lost power because of the Sweden Democrats' losses, that's a challenge.
Listen to the full interview with Nicholas Aylott
Why do you think it went so badly for the Sweden Democrats and I suppose secondly for the Social Democrats?
Nicholas Aylott: This was a bit unexpected. They weren't expected to add too many votes to their previous tallies, but polls had not given them much in the way of losses beforehand – certainly not as much as they actually incurred on election night.
I think the main reason was that the campaign was focused on other issues than those that were at the centre [of the campaign] four years ago.
It may be that we look back and say that the campaign in 2022 provided the ideal conditions for a party like Sweden Democrats: they were in opposition but had broken down many of the taboos that surrounded them, and the political agenda was being set by the perceptions of a crisis situation.This was partly about migration, but primarily about the related topic of criminality and gang violence. And in this crisis atmosphere, the Sweden Democrats were always going to maximise their vote.
This time, I think, the campaign dealt with different questions. The government, I'm sure, would say that they are victims of their own success. Because there's been progress made towards the government's goals on things like levels of migration and, above all, on levels of criminal violence, these issues slipped from the headlines. They didn't feel so acute, and this was to the Sweden Democrats' disadvantage, I think.
...and the Social Democrats?
Nicholas Aylott: This is perhaps even more interesting, They will probably be unhappy with their election campaign. I don't think that they ran a very good, persuasive, inspiring campaign – not least because there was an almost total absence of any exciting election promises.
There's a few about curtailing profits made by private companies in the public sector, there's something about raising taxes for the very richest, something else about free dentistry, but it's not really going to set pulses racing, these sorts of very modest promises.
Instead there was – again – a very strong emphasis on the party leader. That was deemed as questionable four years ago, and I think it's probably going to be deemed as even more questionable this time.
The very defensive campaign that the Social Democrats ran is understandable in a way as the biggest challenge that the party faces is going to be keeping its very disparate coalition together, because it includes parties that can't stand each other, so you can understand why the party didn't want to make too many extravagant promises of its own before settling down to negotiate.
But I also think the Social Democrats have just got out of the habit of thinking about ideology. The party over the last few decades has just become dominated by strategy and tactics. And this is a very important part of politics. But there's only so many voters you can inspire with that sort of very vague, defensive message. And I think a lot of voters who lean towards the left in the last part of the campaign thought they might as well vote for one of the allied parties that at least have a little bit more of an ideological profile.
That brings us to the next thing, which is that the Centre Party has come out and said it wants to start talks with the Social Democrats about forming a government. How do you expect those talks to go?
Nicholas Aylott: Here I'm going to make an uncharacteristically bold statement, but I think the Centre Party is actually very weak in its bargaining position here. It's not nearly as strong as the superficial parliamentary situation might suggest.
I say that because the Centre Party has been so categorical about its red lines before the election. It was most categorical about its red line to the right – it said it couldn't have dealings with any government that was in any way dependent upon the Sweden Democrats.
It's made such a a big deal of this profile for so long now, and its profile as the only traditionally centre-right party that is emphatically against the Sweden Democrats has over time attracted a lot of people from other centre-right parties who really can't stand the Sweden Democrats either. So it has locked the party into a very hostile stance towards the Sweden Democrats.
I don't think it is really credible now for the Centre Party to back away from that, or to even to threaten the Social Democrats or any other party on the left by saying, "give us what we want or we'll go off to the right and support an alternative government". I just don't see that the Centre Party leadership has the credibility to make such threats and be believed.
They were desperately hoping for a way out via the Christian Democrats, that maybe there could be some sort of centrist government that not only got rid of both extremes but included the Christian Democrats. But the mathematics of the election result weren't weren't good enough for that, so the Centre Party is stuck, I think, and it is in a much weaker bargaining position with the other parties of the left than some seem to think.
So your prediction would be that they would have to fold and allow you know, a junior minister from the Left Party at least?
Nicholas Aylott: Some sort of compromise fudge that can allow the Centre Party to save some face.
The right-wing parties are making out that there's a possibility, if there's a deadlock, that the game isn't over for them yet. Do you think that's wishful thinking? How how how much of a chance do you think there is that there could be some sort of minority government of the Moderates and Christian Democrats supported by Centre and the Sweden Democrats or something something like that?
Nicholas Aylott: I don't really see this as a realistic possibility for the reasons that I've mentioned. I just don't think the leadership of the Centre Party could sell such a deal within the party without jeopardising its continued existence.
Isn't that exactly what the Liberal Party did in 2022?
Nicholas Aylott: I don't think the Liberals had painted themselves into a corner to quite the same extent. There was a leadership change in the Liberal Party in 2019 which facilitated a change of tone in the debate. The incoming leader in 2019 didn't say "we're immediately going to move over to the right again", but she hinted that at some stage in the future it might be possible, and then when the opportunity arose in 2021, she did exactly that. I think she had the credibility, the authority within her party, to do that, even though it was very divisive. I don't think a Centre Party leader at the moment has the credibility to do that.
I just don't see this as likely at all, which means that there's only one realistic combination of parties that can sustain a majority and that's the left-leaning majority.
So how long do you think it will take before that logic imposes itself on the different leaders? Will Magdalena Andersson have to go up before parliament and be voted down, or do you think they can just do it in a matter of weeks?
Nicholas Aylott: Well in 2018, which was a comparable situation I suppose, it famously took 134 days to complete, which is much longer than normal. Sweden is not the Netherlands and it's not Belgium. This was five times longer than any previous period of government formation in Sweden, so it's not common but it might be needed again.
The thing is, the eventual outline of the result is pretty... I won't say clear, but it's visible in the mist even today, even now. As I've explained, I don't really see any plausible alternative to the left-leaning quartet as being the foundation of the next Swedish government.
But each of the party leaders has to bargain with one another, of course, and at the same time has to bargain with forces within his or her own party in order to retain the credibility of of the leadership.
The Left Party and the Centre Party have drawn such aggressive red lines before the election that it will take something quite special for each of them to be able to sell concessions internally. And that is what I think may take the most time: that each of those leaders will have to show to their party that they really did everything they could, that they tried everything, they sacrificed a lot, they bargained into the night, and in the end, this is what they've come back with.
That double-level bargaining process, with each other and each of them internally with his or her own party, is going to take time. Whether it takes 134 days, I don't know. But I'd be surprised if it was shorter than everybody expects.
Finally, do you think the Left Party are less frightened of a new election than the Centre Party?
Nicholas Aylott: This is the one semi-plausible alternative I see to a government being formed on the basis of this majority. The Left Party has a strong position now, it's got a better result than the Centre Party, and that counts for some sort of symbolism. Perhaps more importantly, all the scandals that beset the party during the campaign and the problems the party leader has battled through over the last two or three years don't seem to have hurt them at all.
So it's in a strong position now and it's not inconceivable that the Left Party may be so confident and its leader so secure that it might feel it can push its demands all the way to inducing an extra election. If it could do that in a way that shifted the blame onto the Centre Party, then so much the better.
It's not inconceivable, but I still think it's much more likely that nobody will want to risk getting the blame for bringing the voters back to the polling stations. I suspect there will be a compromise. It will take time but there's probably just enough room for each of the involved parties to save just about enough face to make it happen.
Emma Löfgren, Editor, The Local Sweden
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