A four-party opposition coalition led by the Moderate Party’s Ulf Kristersson has won the general election in Sweden after Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson conceded defeat on Wednesday.
With just a handful of votes remaining to be counted four days after Sunday’s close-call vote, the right-wing parties are expected to win 176 seats to the left-wing’s 173, according to the country's election authority.
“In parliament, they have a one or two seat advantage,” Andersson, Sweden’s first woman prime minister, told a press conference. “It’s a thin majority, but it is a majority.”
“I will now start the work of forming a new government that can get things done, a government for all of Sweden and all citizens,” Kristersson told reporters. His party won 19.1% of the vote, right behind its coalition partner Sweden Democrats, which took 20.6%.
Despite their popularity among voters, the Sweden Democrats’ anti-immigration stance has reduced their chances of receiving broad backing from some conservative factions.
After years of welcoming more migrants than any other nation in Europe, Stockholm has finally acknowledged it can neither support them financially nor force them to conform to its laws, causing a shift in population towards anti-immigration movement.
Andersson admitted earlier this year that integration of migrants was “too poor” and the society tasked with enforcing order “too weak” following violent riots in numerous cities. The country’s immigrant population has doubled over the last 20 years and now constitutes a fifth of the Swedish population, a figure over 40% of Swedes considered too high when surveyed in 2016.
Immigration is not the only issue that drove voters to kick the Social Democrats out after eight years in power. Like the rest of Europe, Sweden is in the midst of an economic crisis and may face a recession as soon as next year.
