Sweden Votes as Anti-Immigration Party Eyes Cabinet Posts

Swedish citizens headed to the polls Sunday in one of the nation's most competitive electoral contests in a generation, with the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats poised to join the cabinet for the first time should the incumbent center-right bloc hold its majority.

Voting began at 8 a.m. local time and was scheduled to conclude at 8 p.m., after which exit polls would be released immediately and preliminary vote tallies were expected several hours later. Roughly 8 million Swedes were registered to vote in the nation of 10.6 million, where participation rates routinely exceed 80 percent. A record 3.6 million people submitted early ballots ahead of election day.

For the past four years, the Sweden Democrats — a party with roots in neo-Nazi movements that has gradually edged toward the political mainstream — had backed Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson's three-party center-right coalition from outside government, enabling the alliance to rule without formally bringing the Sweden Democrats into the cabinet. Kristersson has now pledged to grant the party full cabinet representation if the right-leaning bloc wins re-election.

Party leader Jimmie Åkesson, who stands to be appointed migration minister if the coalition prevails, declared at a Saturday campaign rally that the Sweden Democrats "have already won." The party captured just over one-fifth of the vote in the 2022 election and currently ranks as Sweden's second-largest party.

Standing against the right-leaning bloc is a four-party alliance headed by former Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson of the Social Democrats. Andersson, who became Sweden's first female prime minister in 2021 and held the post until 2022, cast her ballot Sunday morning in her home municipality of Nacka, south of Stockholm.

"Now it's up to the Swedish people to decide which direction our country should take," Andersson told reporters. "Should we have a government entirely dominated by the Sweden Democrats? Something that has never happened in Sweden before? Or should we have a government led by me?"

Pre-election surveys had consistently shown the left-leaning bloc holding a comfortable advantage, but that margin eroded rapidly in the final stretch of the campaign. One poll placed the two blocs just 0.3 percentage points apart.

Kristersson's four-year tenure focused heavily on combating organized crime and tightening immigration restrictions — the signature issues that fueled the Sweden Democrats' rise. The party's campaign slogan, "make Sweden Sweden again," drew on the same populist register that has lifted right-of-center movements across Europe and in the United States.

Voters cited healthcare, law and order, immigration and personal finances as the issues most influencing their decisions. The campaign grew contentious at several junctures: Åkesson faced accusations of sexism following remarks he directed at Andersson during a televised debate, and a senior Sweden Democrats official came under scrutiny after his Russian-national partner was linked by an investigative outlet to Russian state influence operations. The official denied that the allegations were significant and took a leave of absence.

Regardless of the outcome, coalition talks are expected to stretch on for weeks, and potentially months.