Election will determine whether anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, which has roots in the far-right, will get ministerial roles, or if the center-left comes back into power
STOCKHOLM — Voters in Sweden headed to the polls on Sunday for an election that will determine whether a conservative leader remains in charge and a hard-right party wins ministerial jobs for the first time, or whether the center-left returns to power.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson is seeking a second four-year term at the helm of the European Union nation that is also NATO’s newest member. Meanwhile, his predecessor hopes to win the job back.
Experts say the campaign has been fragmented and incoherent, with policy questions such as how healthcare should be organized drowned out by questions about which parties will be able to put together a government.
“Crime has come down, inflation has come down. So these topics are not really what people discuss,” said Zeth Isaksson, a sociologist in electoral behavior at Stockholm University and a political scientist at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. “People discuss who is going to be in government, and that’s what the election is about.”
