Sweden’s ruling centre-right coalition won the most votes in a parliamentary election but fell short of a majority, final results showed on Monday, as the anti-immigrant far-right entered a hung house with a key position.
Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt's Alliance won 49.2 per cent of votes and 172 seats in Sweden's 349-seat parliament in Sunday's vote, three short of a majority, according to a final ballot count.
The leftwing opposition coalition garnered 43.7 per cent of the ballot and 157 seats, marking a crushing defeat for Social Democrat Mona Sahlin, 53.
"We have received broad support tonight," Reinfeldt told a jubilant crowd in Stockholm, boasting that his Moderate party had seen its voter support double from 15 per cent in 2002 to 30 per cent on Sunday.
Yet, he acknowledged, "this is not the election result we had hoped for," lamenting the far-right Sweden Democrats' entry into Parliament for the first time, with 5.7 per cent of the vote, and 20 seats in the house.
Even with a handful of parliamentary seats, observers have cautioned the far-right party could play either kingmaker or spoiler, forcing Reinfeldt to seek new alliances or even make it so difficult to govern that snap polls are forced.
"I have been clear ... We will not cooperate with or be made dependent on the Sweden Democrats," Reinfeldt, 45, said in his victory speech, adding that he would seek to shore up support from elsewhere.
"I will turn to the Greens to get broader support in Parliament," he said. The Green Party, which campaigned as part of a "red-green" opposition coalition with the Social Democrats and formerly communist Left Party and which scored its best election result ever with 7.2 per cent of the vote, however rejected the idea outright.
"It would be very difficult for us after this campaign to look our voters in the eyes and say we have agreed to cooperate with this government," party co-chair Maria Wetterstrand told Swedish public television.
Social Democrat Sahlin, who had been vying to become Sweden's first woman prime minister, meanwhile warned that the far-right's rise had put Sweden in a "dangerous political situation."
"It is now up to Fredrick Reinfeldt how he plans to rule Sweden without letting the (far-right) Sweden Democrats get political influence," she told a crowd of crestfallen supporters after acknowledging defeat.
Reinfeldt's win spelled a decisive end to the rival Social Democrats' 80-year domination of Swedish politics and their role as caretakers of the country's famous cradle-to-grave welfare state.