Swedish prime minister Magdalena Andersson has conceded defeat after a tight general election saw the country’s centre-right bloc finish one seat ahead after a four-day count.
Any centre-right administration will need support from the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD), however, shattering a taboo of postwar Swedish politics.
“It’s a thin majority, but it is a majority, so tomorrow I will therefore request my dismissal,” said Ms Andersson, Social Democrat leader, who will stay on in a caretaker capacity until a new government is formed.
A provisional result with 98 per cent of votes counted gave the centre-right a lead of 47,000 votes and 175 seats - a one-seat majority - in the 349 seat Riksdag parliament.
After two terms in opposition, that would hand a governing mandate to the centre-right Moderates party and its leader Ulf Kristersson, along with its traditional partners, the Christian Democrats and Liberals.
Key to their majority are the populist SD, seen as the election’s big winners for overtaking the Moderates to win 20.6 per cent, making it the second-largest party in the country
With extremist and neo-Nazi roots, the SD and its leader Jimmie Akesson softened its traditional anti-Islam, anti-EU message but remained stridently critical of immigrants and asylum seekers on the campaign trail, linking them to a surge in gang violence and gun crime — the decisive election issue.
While Mr Akesson has signalled he wants to enter government, his party will more likely steer government policy from the opposition benches, voting strategically with a minority centre-right government on immigration and related issues.
The party offered voters a 30-point plan for an immigration regime among Europe’s most restrictive, allowing Sweden reject asylum seekers based on religion, gender or sexual identity.
Post-election analysis showed this struck a chord in particular with Swedish working class male voters.
Also striking: SD support among first-time voters, particularly young men, doubled to 22 per cent compared to the last election.
Political analysts attribute the SD success both to its image as a guarantor of stricter immigration and a weakening of the stigma in Swedish politics over discussing these issues.
“As largest party on the right the SD will demand a high price for its support,” said Prof Andrej Kokkonen, political scientist at the University of Gothenburg.
“Sweden will see stricter immigration policies, tougher laws on crime, more money to the police and, in short, will become more like Denmark.”
Protest is already building at the prospect of Mr Kristersson, a 58-year-old career politician, becoming prime minister with SD support.
In 2018 he promised Hédi Fried — a prominent Swedish writer, psychologist and Holocaust survivor — not to rule with SD support.
Since Sunday evening, with that prospect more likely, his social media channels have been flooded with posts of the words “Hédi Fried” in a campaign organised by a well known Swedish rapper.
Mr Kristersson has hit back, insisting his promise not to accept SD support only covered the 2018 election.
It remains to be seen if the Moderates, in third place with 19.1 per cent support, can covert a theoretical parliamentary majority into a working government. Leading members of the Liberals — a traditional Moderates ally — are threatening to boycott any administration reliant on SD support.
Facing the prospect of opposition after two terms in office, Sweden’s Social Democratic Party struggled to convince voters with its tougher immigration promises and rhetoric.
Outgoing prime minister Andersson was particularly strident, promising to dilute immigrant numbers in certain areas to end “Somalitown” and “Chinatown” ghettos.
Her tough-talking strategy appears to have backfired. While it secured modest gains to finish in first place on 30.4 per cent, Swedish voters with an immigrant background — disillusioned with the shift in political rhetoric — abandoned the Social Democrats and other leftist parties for a new conservative Islamist party, Nyans (Nuance).
It was founded by Turkish-Swedish politician Mikail Yüksel, expelled from the liberal Centre Party in 2018 because of his ties to violent Turkish nationalist groups, and his support for Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Confounding polls and election analyses, Nuance came from nowhere to top the poll in many neighbourhoods with large immigrant communities.
Though Nuance failed to clear the five per cent hurdle to enter parliament, it pulled away enough support to leave the centre-left bloc just shy of a majority.