STOCKHOLM: Sweden’s national election results showed a narrow lead early on Monday for the centre-left opposition over the right-wing government, which could halt the nation’s drift away from its liberal heritage.
The left-leaning bloc, headed by the Social Democrats’leaderMagdalenaAndersson,wasexpected to win 176 seats in the 349-seat parliament, the Riksdag, based on votes from 6,195 of Sweden’s 6,312 election districts, the election authority said.
The right-wing governing bloc of Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson was seen winning 173 seats, with ballotcounting continuing, and with a final result expected to come on Wednesday at the earliest.
The election, while unlikely to change the course of Sweden’s pro-Western and pro-Ukraine stance, could decide whether Kristersson’s push toward a hard-right clampdown on migration continues or even accelerates.
Given the closeness of the race, the winner may not be known for several days, after all overseas ballots have been counted.
‘It’s a very tight race, it’s going to be a very long night but I think the Social Democrats have done quite a good election,’ Adonay Endrias Kidane, a doctor and supporter of the Social Democrats, said at the party’s postelection gathering in central Stockholm.
In a pre-election pledge, Kristersson broke a longstanding taboo and said he would bring into government the Sweden Democrats, a far-right party with roots in the neo-Nazi fringe, as he aims to create a majority-right coalition. Many voters on the right say a win would amount to an endorsement of policies that have helped to curb gang violence and cut immigration dramatically. But some in the Nordic nation of 10.6 million have expressed wariness, saying Kristersson’s invitation to the far right was a step too far. Kristersson’s critics also say his immigration policies, with incentives and penalties that pressure migrants either to conform more closely to Swedish cultural norms or leave the country, are undermining civil liberties.
Kristersson has trailed in opinion polls throughout his four years in office but had been catching up in the final weeks of campaigning, while Andersson and her Social Democrats lost ground.-Reuters