An official familiar with the matter said Kristersson intends to play hardball — he is expected to try to tempt the small, liberal Center party to leave Andersson’s camp and join his side, before forcing a vote in the new parliament on whether he can stay on as prime minister. That vote is likely to be at least two weeks away.
The finely balanced contest is bittersweet for Andersson and her allies on the left. For months, her bloc had been leading comfortably in the polls, but the race tightened dramatically in the last two weeks of the campaign.
Speaking around midnight, she said the votes counted so far pointed to an “even” outcome. “But right now we are leading and if this holds up, Sweden will get a new government,” she said, to cheers from supporters packed into her party’s glitzy election night reception.
The election is a watershed moment for Sweden: An Andersson victory would restore center-left rule, while a Kristersson win could bring the far-right Sweden Democrats — a strongly anti-immigration party founded in the 1980s by neo-Nazis — into government for the first time. The result will also be watched closely elsewhere in Europe, where nationalist movements are gaining ground.
Kristersson has been governing for the past four years with support from the Sweden Democrats in parliament, but without giving them a formal role in the coalition.
He said the closeness of the result would make forming a government “complicated,” but insisted the left had failed to win a majority for its “socialist” economic program. “Where it ends remains to be seen,” he told his supporters at the Moderates’ election night party in central Stockholm. “But we are not in a hurry.”
