Sweden Votes Sunday With Far Right Near Power
Sweden Votes Sunday With Far Right Near Power
The News
Swedes vote Sunday in a national election that could put the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats inside government for the first time, and hand the winner a budget squeezed between a permanently larger defense bill and a welfare state voters want protected.
Sweden holds its general election on Sunday, Sept. 13, in a contest tight enough that the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats — polling at 19 percent, according to The Independent — could move from outside backer to coalition partner with ministerial posts.
The Guardian reports the latest poll shows a 0.3-point gap between the left and right blocs. The center-left opposition, backing Social Democrats leader Magdalena Andersson for prime minister, holds a small but narrowing lead over Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson's center-right minority coalition, which governs with outside support from the Sweden Democrats.
Russia's war in Ukraine and uncertainty over President Donald Trump's commitment to European security hang over the result, CNBC reports — but neither featured much in the campaign. Voters focused on health care, schools and household finances.
The Numbers
Sweden's government debt stood at 35 percent in 2025 and is forecast to rise to 39 percent this year, CNBC reports. SEB Chief Economist Jens Magnusson said the government deployed roughly 80 billion Swedish kronor ($8.3 billion) in unfunded reforms this year, plus another 45 billion to 50 billion kronor in defense spending and support for Ukraine outside the normal fiscal framework.
Timeline
The Sweden Democrats are founded as a radical nationalist party. An internal investigation found some founders were neo-Nazis; the party has since disavowed those roots, expelled openly racist members and says it maintains a strict "no racism" policy.
Jimmie Åkesson takes over as leader and begins cleaning up the party's image, according to The Independent.
At the height of Europe's refugee crisis, Sweden takes in 163,000 asylum seekers, the second highest per capita on the continent — about one person for every 60 locals.
Sweden joins NATO, abandoning more than two centuries of military non-alignment after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Swedish military expenditure rises sharply during a major rearmament drive, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
NATO members agree to raise defense spending to 3.5 percent of GDP by 2035, plus an additional 1.5 percent for defense- and security-related spending.
The Sweden Democrats pay for adverts promoting a "remigration grant" offering migrants about 350,000 Swedish kronor (roughly $37,000) to leave the country. One ad reads: "Do you miss Mogadishu? The remigration grant will help you get home." So far this year, 171 people have taken up the offer.
The far-right Alternative for Germany wins the Saxony-Anhalt state election, The Independent reports. Trump praised the party and criticized the "absolutely horrible Immigration rules and regulations which have hurt Germany so badly."
Swedes go to the polls.
Reactions
"The election is a referendum on the Sweden Democrats; whether we continue to go down a far-right path," author and political commentator Jan Guillou told The Independent.
Kristersson argues Sweden needs a stable majority government to tackle national security and gang crime, and that the only way to get one is to include the Sweden Democrats.
"If the Sweden Democrats enter government, that would have an enormously negative impact on the liberal ideals of our country," said Birgitta Ohlsson, European affairs minister from 2010 to 2014 and now a Center Party lawmaker. "We've already seen the effects while they've been outside government, and it would be ten times worse."
Jenny Madestam, a political scientist at Södertörn University, said Åkesson's appeal is his ordinariness: "He's not up on a high horse and he has a knack for explaining complicated issues in an easy, understandable way. He is the guy next door."
On Russia there is little argument. "The biggest threat to Sweden's security is from the war in Ukraine and there is almost complete consensus in Sweden about support for Ukraine and deep antipathy towards Russia," Nicholas Aylott of Södertörn University told the Associated Press.
Magnusson was blunt about Trump's role in the rearmament: "I don't think you can blame it all on Trump, but he certainly hasn't helped."
What's Next
Polls close Sunday, and the makeup of any coalition remains up in the air, CNBC reports — the center-left has refused to work with the Sweden Democrats, so a right-bloc win is the path to the party's first ministerial jobs.
Whoever wins faces the bill. Magnusson expects higher defense spending to be a structural shift lasting at least five to 10 years, which eventually means higher taxes, lower spending elsewhere or more debt. Swedbank Chief Economist Mattias Persson said defense spending needs to be brought back inside the normal budget process over the coming years.
"I do think that it will be a rather hard crash when these promises meet with the reality after the election," Magnusson said.
More
Sweden's asylum numbers have fallen 96 percent from the 2015 peak to a 40-year low, The Independent reports, after successive governments of both the left and right tightened migration rules. Kristersson says the focus now is integration; the Sweden Democrats want to go further, with a 2026 program calling for cutting migration to the lowest possible level, deporting foreign nationals accused of serious crimes, harsher criminal penalties and lower fuel and energy costs. The party also wants to extend the cash-to-leave offer to immigrants holding Swedish citizenship if they agree to revoke it and go.
Foreign policy has stayed out of the fight because the major parties largely agree on it. "It's about how we should fund defense, rather than whether Sweden should invest in defense as such," said Jonas Tallberg, a professor of political science at Stockholm University, who added that rising defense budgets across Europe "have to be at the expense of something, and typically aspects related to the welfare state or, for that matter, foreign aid."
Jan Teorell, also a political scientist at Stockholm University, said this "could be more of a welfare election than we've had for quite some time," with migration and law and order still important but welfare rising up the list.
Poll
Should mainstream parties bring anti-immigration parties into government?
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