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While Sweden has been making necessary strides to solve its many problems with immigration, criminality, energy, inflation, and low growth, the current centre-right government, supported by the nationalist Sweden Democrats, has been haunted by a spectre ever since the start of its rule. That is that its victory was in actuality quite fragile.
In the 2022 election, the right-wing coalition of the Moderates, the Sweden Democrats, the Christian Democrats, and the Liberals won with a margin of less than one percent, and a total of three seats’ advantage over the left in parliament. When the post-election polling started again a few weeks afterwards, the newly formed government immediately found itself in the shadow of the left-wing opposition – where it has remained ever since.
Government has been polling under opposition for three years
The intrinsic better turnout in polls for the so-called red-green parties, the Social Democrats, the Left Party, the Green Party, and the Centre Party, is likely explained by factors that are common in most Western democracies. Progressive parties generally have very politically active supporters, who are generally more open about their sympathies and priorities than right-wing voters. This tends to amount to an overrepresentation of left-wing parties in polling compared to the actual election results.
But the circumstances around the so-called Tidö government, named after the castle where the right-wing parties negotiated their terms of cooperation, lends credence to the notion that this “first Swedish conservative government in 100 years” rules on borrowed time. Its first two years of governance were characterised by austere economic measures, which the left-wing-dominated media and civil society took easy jabs at.
It is always difficult as a government to explain why the price of food and energy has risen, when the factors behind economic disarray can be complex, and ultimately stem from decisions made many years ago. That the government presided over the height of the infamous Swedish crime wave, even though solutions to gang violence was one of the ruling parties’ leading issues, did not help. It also did not help that immigration continued, despite migration being the other key issue that carried the right wing to victory in 2022.
A number of scandals related to government ministers, cabinet staff, and other losses of face for prime minister Ulf Kristersson may have also done their fair share to genuinely tip the favour to the opposition. To be precise, it is the parties actually in government, the Moderates, the Christian Democrats, and the Liberals that have taken a beating according to the numbers – The Sweden Democrats consistently soar higher than their 2022 election results, showing that it is the ‘centre’ in the centre-right that is the weakest link. The decline of the Swedish ‘bourgeois parties’ is an interesting topic in and of itself.
As the four-year term enters its final year, there are many reasons for many voters to be dissatisfied, including right-wingers. But there may be a light at the end of the tunnel for this ‘conservative’ government, just when they needed that morale boost for the 2026 election; the red-greens have started to slip, and the gap between the blocs appears surmountable.
The gradual erosion of the Social Democrats
Technically, the left wing’s loss of the poll pole position didn’t really appear overnight. One important development has been observable not in the party poll, but in the party leader poll. The self-crowned matriarch of Swedish politics, Magdalena Andersson, leader of the Social Democrats, has been suffering a long-term confidence decline among the voters, which can be traced back to as early as 2023. After the election in 2022, she enjoyed high confidence from a remarkable 60 percent of voters; in one September 2025 survey, she had dipped down to 43 percent.
This is not far from where prime minister Kristersson tends to land. But even closer to the matriarch is the Sweden Democrats’ leader Jimmie Åkesson, who has successively climbed up the polls over time. When Kristersson has had scandals pinned on him and his leadership, he has even slipped below Åkesson, which has further jeopardised his leadership. Is it the struggling Moderates or the Sweden Democrats who is most natural to lead the next Tidö government?
While the question of uncertainty over who the leader of the right actually is is compromising for the government, the slow-burning crisis of the left is starting to get under the skin of red-green politicians. Perhaps drunk on their natural advantage in the polls, they have yet not formulated an alternative to the Tidö government. As such, they lack a cohesive ‘shadow cabinet’. Right-wing commentators and politicians tend to point out the contradictions built into a Social Democratic government incorporating both the Centre Party, a neoliberal market-friendly party, and the Left Party, a socialist party with roots in communism. The task of satisfying both these elements has been kicked down the road for three years so far, yet it is becoming clearer the closer the election grows, that Magdalena Andersson needs to back up her bid for government with a functional coalition.
Recently, leaks from inside the parties on the left shows that there is a growing desperation in their camp. Particular grievances have been aired between the parties that the Centre Party is making coalition building harder by refusing to announce their loyalty to the Social Democrats, instead opting to constitute a kind of political “middle”, or a centre in the literal form.
But the self-confidence of the Left Party is also causing headaches for the Social Democrats. The Left, having in effect been a passive supporter of Social Democratic governments for more than a century, is demanding ministerial posts. For Magdalena Andersson, this presents a number of massive challenges; the Social Democrats have a recent history of losing elections due to the voters’ fear that the Left will be allowed into government. The prospect of the former communist party holding ministerial posts is all the more terrifying for many, due to the Left’s many recent scandals with anti-Israeli activism that has bordered on apologetics for terrorism.
All of these complications that have been building up since 2022 (and since before) are only in addition to the political issues that made the red-greens lose the last election. Mass immigration, crime, unreasonable climate policies, and fuel and energy prices are some of the things that have been building up frustration among many Swedes for the past few years. Even if the voters have seemingly had a high tolerance for these things (after all, the left only lost the 2022 election with a very thin margin), the polls are indirectly showing that few people actually want a return to the typical left-wing paradigm.
Late delivery may reward the right wing
While the Tidö government has been meticulously (but arguably too slowly) been setting Sweden on the right course, the slow delivery of reforms has often been the subject of lampooning on the right. Something that may play into their current poll successes is several breakthroughs in a short time span. In this past year, there have been numerous immigration related legislative changes that have finally been implemented, with more nearing completion in 2026. Violent crime has in turn become less common, and more criminals are receiving longer prison sentences.
The government’s budget for 2026 also includes several much appreciated tax cuts, including a slashing of the value-added tax on food. Improving the economy of ordinary people is something that the government has been criticised for claiming to want to do, but never delivered on. This time around, with inflation under control, many genuine tax reliefs may be felt for many voters.
All of these factors coming together at this time, coinciding with the subtle decline of the left, have made a renewed conservative victory in 2026 seem within reach, just over the span of a few months. Even though politics usually move abysmally slow in Sweden and elections normally are fights over table scraps of undecided voters, this summer and early autumn has shown that there can be exceptions. Conservatives just have to hope the wind stays in the Tidö parties’ sails for one more year.