By Simon Johnson
STOCKHOLM, Sept 10-(Reuters) – Swedes will vote on Sunday in a tight election that has effectively become a referendum on whether the far-right Sweden Democrats should join the government and cement their journey from pariahs to trusted partners in a country once seen as one of Europe’s most liberal.
The party, with roots in the neo-Nazi fringe, has around 19% of the vote, according to the latest polls, and the ruling centre-right minority coalition has vowed to bring them into its bloc to secure Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson a second term in office.
“We have agreed to campaign on a platform of building a common, majority government and that I will lead that government,” Kristersson told Reuters on the campaign trail in late August.
The election will show whether Swedish voters want to deepen a political shift that has already upended decades of consensus on immigration and national identity, and turned one of Europe’s most open societies into a testing ground for tougher policies on integration, citizenship and border controls.
Kristersson has credited his cooperation in parliament with the Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Akesson, since 2022, for delivering growth, lower prices for energy and food, reducing gang crime and shootings and cutting asylum numbers to record lows. He has promised to deepen ties after the Sept. 13 vote and give the party cabinet positions.
Over the last four years, the government has abolished permanent residency for refugees, tightened welfare rules and boosted expulsions of those without a right to stay.
Asylum numbers have dropped to a 40-year low and while Kristersson says the focus will now be on integration, the Sweden Democrats want to go further.
“In Sweden it is Swedish culture, the Swedish language, Swedish laws, Swedish norms, Swedish morals and Swedish traditions that apply,” Mattias Karlsson, Sweden Democrat lawmaker and one of Akesson’s closest allies, told Reuters.
“If you can’t accept that, you have to find somewhere else to live.”
Despite a consensus over tight immigration policies, many Swedes still feel a deep unease about the far right and polls point to a knife-edge vote with the centre-left opposition, which is backing Social Democrats leader Magdalena Andersson for prime minister, holding a small but narrowing lead.
“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.”
NEW LANDSCAPE
The rise of the far right has reshaped Europe’s political landscape, with such parties already sharing power in countries including Finland, Italy, Croatia and the Czech Republic, while posing growing challenges in France and Germany.
Akesson’s Sweden Democrats have spent the last four years as Kristersson’s main parliamentary backers and some analysts say the election may be less a watershed than a recognition of Akesson’s success in shedding the party’s extremist baggage. The party apologised in 2025 for past neo-Nazi and antisemitic views.
“The election is a referendum on the Sweden Democrats; whether we continue to go down a far-right path,” Jan Guillou, author and political commentator, told Reuters.
Policies that a decade ago many Swedes would have viewed as a rejection of the country’s liberal values have gained acceptance across much of the political spectrum.
The blocs have also converged in several areas of key concern to voters with both promising stronger welfare, continued support for Ukraine, rearmament and measures to ease a cost-of-living crisis that has hit many households hard.
“I think you’ll see a continued normalization of the Sweden Democrats,” said Lars Tragardh, a historian and author who led work on a government cultural heritage list criticised at the time by some as too narrow and exclusionary.
“It’s time to tone down the hysteria.”
FURTHER SHIFT?
Critics, however, fear the Sweden Democrats’ promises to end multiculturalism, restore traditional Swedish values and ban some forms of Muslim dress could deepen social divisions and shift the political centre of gravity even further right.
“I’m afraid more people will be expelled. I’m worried about the press, free speech and the freedom to demonstrate,” said Kurdo Baksi, an author and anti-racism campaigner, speaking on the sidelines of a pro-immigration demonstration in Stockholm.
In a Facebook campaign message, Andersson said voters’ choice was not whether she or the incumbent Kristersson would become prime minister, but whether the Sweden Democrats would shape policy on defence, schools, culture and finance.
“That would be a very different Sweden,” she said.
Even if she wins, Andersson faces a daunting task in building a stable coalition.
The four opposition parties, the Social Democrats, Greens, Left Party and Centre Party, broadly agree on increasing welfare and public spending.
But they differ on key policies, from a tax on billionaires to whether Sweden should build new nuclear reactors, and the Centre Party refuses to sit in the same government as the Left Party.
(Reporting by Simon Johnson, additional reporting by Johan Ahlander; editing by Niklas Pollard, Alexandra Hudson)
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