Early and overseas vote counting begins in Sweden

The Swedish Electoral Commission has begun counting the early vote and the vote cast from abroad of the elections held last Sunday, waiting for the final results to be released late Wednesday, when 200,000 of the 250,000 pending envelopes have been counted.

This recount may condition which party will head the next Swedish government, since the results of the in-person vote gave 155 of the 349 seats in Parliament to the four right-wing parties, with the far-right Sweden Democrats at the head, so they would have an absolute majority.

On the other hand, the left-wing bloc only won 154 seats, despite the fact that the Social Democratic Party of Sweden (PSS) of Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson was the most voted party with 30.5 percent of the support.

As of 11 a.m., five districts had completed the vote count with no change in the distribution of seats among the eight parties, according to ‘The Local’.

Andersson refused to write off his chances of governing last Sunday and claimed that “that night they were not going to have the final result.” However, Ulf Kristersson, the leader of the Moderate Party said he was ready to get a “new and strong” government.

However, although the sum of the seats of the right wing is enough to govern the signing of an agreement could be complicated since the Moderate Party has to find a way to justify being the leader of the four parties when it has been surpassed in votes by the far right.

The third possibility would be a German-style grand coalition with the PSS and the Moderate Party, but this seems unlikely given the precedents of clashes and rivalry between the two formations. This avenue would only be explored if the other options fail.