New citizens may have influenced Sweden’s close election, SVT finds

People who became Swedish citizens during the Tidö government’s four years may have given the red-green parties an advantage in Sweden’s close 2026 election, but the claim cannot be empirically confirmed, SVT Verifierar reports.

Weeks before the election, Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Åkesson argued that the Social Democrats’ migration policy was a long-term strategy to win votes. During SVT’s final debate on September 11, he said the election could be the first in which Muslim immigration determined the result.

After the opposition took the lead during election night, several Sweden Democrats figures claimed on social media that the result had been decided in favour of the left-wing bloc by people who had received Swedish citizenship under the Tidö government.

SVT’s election day survey showed that voters with a non-European background were more likely to support the red-green parties. The Left Party also made significant gains in several disadvantaged areas. However, this does not show that people who had recently become Swedish citizens voted in the same way.

Henrik Andersson, an economist at Uppsala University who has studied voter turnout among people with an immigrant background, said the group of new citizens was broader than people born outside Europe and included people from different backgrounds and regions.

SVT’s calculations indicate that the new citizens may have provided the red-green parties with tens of thousands of votes. But the estimate depends on several uncertainties, including turnout among the different groups and their party preferences.

Using voting patterns from SVT’s Valu exit poll and assuming a turnout of 60 percent, SVT estimated that the red-green parties had an advantage of about 35,000 votes. The figure is an upper limit because children could not be excluded from the calculation, and new citizens may have different political preferences from people who have held citizenship for longer.

Data from the Swedish Migration Agency showed that 64 percent of those who became citizens after the Tidö government took office in October 2022 had a non-European background. Six percent came from the Nordic countries and 24 percent from other European countries.

Public data does not show the children’s regions of origin or their exact ages when they became citizens. Statistics Sweden reports new citizens in the age groups zero to six and seven to 17. Assuming an even age distribution among children aged seven to 17, about one quarter of the new citizens were under 18 on election day.

Excluding children on that basis would reduce the estimated difference between the blocs to about 30,000 votes. On the morning of September 16, the blocs were separated by 33,400 votes.

Henrik Ekengren Oscarsson, a researcher specialising in elections, said it was difficult to identify exactly which groups had determined such a close election. He said party policies, political issues, campaign statements, ideological trends, the macroeconomy and mobilisation were the more established explanations.

The Sweden Democrats proposed a temporary halt to new citizenships in November 2022 while stricter requirements were being prepared. The proposal did not receive support in the parliamentary Social Insurance Committee. New, tougher citizenship rules entered into force on June 6, 2026, including stricter requirements for self-support and knowledge of Swedish and Swedish society.