Swedish voters appear to have ousted incumbent prime minster Ulf Kristerssen in a blow to both him and the far-right party he aimed to govern with.
A poll by the SVT public broadcaster on Sunday (13 September) showed Kristerssen’s liberal-rightwing bloc trailing with 46.8 percent, compared to 51.3 percent for the left-green alliance of former socialist prime minister Magdalena Andersson.
Kristerssen had promised to lead the country in a coalition with the far-right Sweden Democrats party of Jimmie Åkesson, which had helped support his minority government informally for the past four years.
And his bet seemed to go with the zeitgeist, after German voters in the region of Saxony-Anhalt gave a resounding win to the far-right Alternative for Deutschland party last weekend.
But speaking to EUobserver in Stockholm on Sunday, John Paul Epithite, senior value manager, 63, for one, said he voted for Andersson to keep Åkesson out of power.
