1994 Swedish general election

1994 Swedish general election

← 1991 18 September 1994 1998 →

All 349 seats in the Riksdag
175 seats needed for a majority
  First party Second party Third party
 
Leader Ingvar Carlsson Carl Bildt Olof Johansson
Party Social Democrats Moderate Centre
Last election 138 80 31
Seats won 161 80 27
Seat change Increase23 Steady0 Decrease4
Popular vote 2,513,905 1,243,253 425,153
Percentage 45.25% 22.38% 7.65%
Swing Increase7.54pp Increase0.46pp Decrease0.85pp

  Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party
 
Leader Bengt Westerberg Gudrun Schyman Marianne Samuelsson
Birger Schlaug
Party Liberal People's Left Green
Last election 33 16 0
Seats won 26 22 18
Seat change Decrease7 Increase6 Increase18
Popular vote 399,556 342,988 279,042
Percentage 7.19% 6.17% 5.02%
Swing Decrease1.94pp Increase1.66pp Increase1.64pp

  Seventh party
 
Leader Alf Svensson
Party Christian Democrats
Last election 26
Seats won 15
Seat change Decrease11
Popular vote 225,974
Percentage 4.07%
Swing Decrease3.07pp

Map of the election, showing the distribution of constituency and levelling seats, as well as the largest political bloc within each constituency.

PM before election

Carl Bildt
Moderate

Elected PM

Ingvar Carlsson
Social Democrats

General elections were held in Sweden on 18 September 1994.[1] The Swedish Social Democratic Party remained the largest party in the Riksdag, winning 161 of the 349 seats.[2] Led by Ingvar Carlsson, the party returned to power and formed a minority government after the election. This was the final time the Social Democrats recorded above 40% of the vote before the party's vote share steeply declined four years later and never recovered. The Greens also returned to the Riksdag in the 1994 elections, after a three-year absence.

The election saw the largest bloc differences for a generation, with the red-green parties making sizeable inroads into the blue heartlands of inner Småland and Western Götaland, at an even higher rate than 1988. The Social Democrats gathered more than 50% of the vote in all five northern counties, Blekinge, Södermanland, Västmanland and Örebro.[3]

In spite of the loss of power, the Moderates retained their 80 seats and gained 0.5% from 1991. Due to the sizeable losses of their coalition, the net difference between the blocs was 53, with the red-greens making up 201 and the blue parties 148.[3]

The Christian Democrats fared poorly, merely beating the threshold by 3,752 votes.[3] New Democracy, a right-wing populist political party which had entered the Riksdag three years earlier, performed poorly, losing most of its voters and all of its seats in the Riksdag. In total the party's vote share dropped from 6.7% in 1991 to 1.2% in 1994. The election introduced an extended electoral cycle of four years, replacing the previous three-year terms.

The proportion of women elected to the Riksdag increased from 34% in 1991 to 40%,[4][5] following a campaign by the Stödstrumporna [sv] (lit.'The Support stockings') before the elections.[6]

They were the first elections in the world in which the official results were published live on the nascent internet.[7]

  1. ^ Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) Elections in Europe: A data handbook, p1858 ISBN 978-3-8329-5609-7
  2. ^ Nohlen & Stöver, p1873
  3. ^ a b c "Allmänna valen 1994. Del 1, Riksdagsvalet den 18 september 1994" (PDF) (in Swedish). Statistical Central Bureau. Retrieved 18 November 2019.
  4. ^ "Elections held in 1991". Inter-Parliamentary Union.
  5. ^ "Elections held in 1994". Inter-Parliamentary Union.
  6. ^ Törnqvist, Maria (2019). ”Varannan damernas eller hela makten? Kommentar till Maria-Pia Boëthius, "Krav på kvinnoparti"”. i Klara Arnberg, Fia Sundevall, David Tjeder. Könspolitiska nyckeltexter. Från Det går an till #metoo. p. 422–426
  7. ^ General aspects of Sweden's electoral system Election Resources