Sweden's Prime Minister Resigned After the Final Count Gave the Left 176 Seats to His Bloc's 173. About 50,000 Votes Decided It, and the Far-Right Sweden Democrats Lost Ground for the First Time Since Entering Parliament in 2010.

Sweden's center-right Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson announced his resignation Thursday after the Election Authority's final count confirmed that the left-leaning opposition had won a three-seat majority in the Riksdag. The four opposition parties took 176 of the chamber's 349 seats. The four parties that made up or supported Kristersson's government took 173. Roughly 50,000 votes separated the two sides in a country of 10.6 million people, and the result was not settled until the final ballots were tallied, four days after Sunday's vote.

"Now, it is the speaker who will lead the next stage of the way to a new government," Kristersson wrote in a letter posted on X shortly after the result was published. "I am henceforth requesting that I be relieved of the office of prime minister to allow that work to start immediately." Under Sweden's constitution the speaker of parliament now consults the party leaders and proposes a candidate, and the Riksdag cannot vote on a new prime minister before September 29.

The outcome upended expectations. Kristersson's Moderates had governed since 2022 with the Christian Democrats and Liberals inside the cabinet and the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats supporting it from outside, an arrangement that delivered some of the strictest migration policies in Europe. But the Sweden Democrats' history, which includes neo-Nazi and white-supremacist roots that the party has spent two decades trying to shed, became a drag on the whole bloc. The party finished with 17.5 percent of the vote, about three points below its 2022 showing and the first decline it has suffered in any national election since it entered parliament in 2010.

Magdalena Andersson, who served as Sweden's first female prime minister for less than a year in 2021 and 2022, will now try to assemble a government. "The Swedish people have voted for a new direction for our country, voted for unity and against division," she said. Her Social Democrats are again the largest party, with 99 seats, though they lost eight from the last election. Her campaign leaned on healthcare, education, climate policy and a promise to keep immigration controls in place while lowering the temperature of the debate around them.

The arithmetic is simpler than the politics. Andersson's majority depends on the Left Party, the Greens and the Centre Party, and those three do not agree with each other. The Centre Party wants tax cuts and refuses to sit in a cabinet that includes the Left. The Left Party wants a billionaire tax and insists on ministerial posts. The Greens oppose nuclear power, which the outgoing government had pushed hard to expand. Andersson has already ruled out giving the Left Party cabinet seats while seeking its votes in parliament, which is the same tightrope she walked in her first term.

The history suggests patience will be required. Forming a government took 37 days after the 2022 election and 134 days after the 2018 one, when a hung parliament left the country without a permanent government for more than four months. Kristersson remains prime minister in a caretaker capacity until the Riksdag approves a successor.