Sweden voted on 13 September. A month later, the country is still waiting for a new government.

A narrow result

The opposition parties won 176 of the 349 seats in the Riksdag, against 173 for the Tidö parties that supported Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson's government. Analysts at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation noted several shifts: the Social Democrats stayed the largest party despite their weakest showing in more than a century, the Sweden Democrats lost votes for the first time since entering parliament, and the centre-right parties did better than the final polls suggested.

The process so far

Kristersson resigned after the result. On 18 September, the Speaker, Andreas Norlén, gave Social Democrat leader Magdalena Andersson the task of forming a new government. Her first round of talks with the other opposition parties did not produce an agreement.

The two blocs disagree about who should govern with whom, which makes a stable arrangement hard to assemble even with a majority on paper.

How a Swedish prime minister is chosen

Sweden uses so-called negative parliamentarism. The Speaker proposes a candidate, and that candidate becomes prime minister unless more than half of all members, 175 of 349, vote against. A candidate therefore does not need a majority in favour, only to avoid a majority against. That rule gives small parties that abstain considerable leverage.

What to watch

If the Speaker's nominees are rejected four times, a new election must be held. That has never happened. The more likely outcome is a minority government that depends on parties outside the cabinet, as Sweden has had for most of its recent history.

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