Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt’s center-right bloc missed out on a parliamentary majority by two seats on Thursday, a final count of votes cast in a weekend election showed.
Reinfeldt’s four-party Alliance gained one extra seat at the expense of the left-wing opposition after votes cast by Swedes living abroad were counted, giving it 173 seats, two short of a majority, election authorities said.
Reinfeldt, whose bloc took 49.28 percent of the vote, must now seek alliances with leftwing opposition parties to form a government. The 45-year-old outgoing prime minister has already ruled out any deal with the far-right Sweden Democrats, which enter parliament for the first time with 20 seats.
The Social Democrats and their leftwing opposition coalition partners the Greens and the former communist Left Party took 43.6 percent and 156 seats, while the Sweden Democrats won 5.7 percent of the vote.
Turnout in Sunday’s election was 84.63 percent.
Reinfeldt and other party leaders have kept a low profile since Monday, saying they would wait to discuss the future government make-up and possible new alliances until after the final results are in.
Discussions were expected to pick up yesterday, but a new government is not expected to be announced until Oct. 5 at the earliest.
The question of whether Reinfeldt could secure a majority was breathlessly followed in Sweden, since the stability of a minority government — common in Sweden — was compromised by the far-right’s parliamentary debut.
The leftwing opposition and Sweden Democrats together won just 1,805 more votes than Reinfeldt’s coalition.
On a lighter note, Donald Duck, the king and God were among those who snagged votes in the election, a final list of hand-written votes published by the election authority showed.
Hand-written ballots are allowed in Swedish polls. Voters normally use them to write down the name of the established party they wish to vote for, but random options also pop up on ballots.
More than 120 people wanted to see “Donald Duck,” the Walt Disney Company’s cartoon character, get elected. “My party” meanwhile garnered four votes, while “Myself” got two, the same number as “Jesus, Jesus Christ and God.”
“The king,” supposedly Carl XVI Gustaf, meanwhile won three votes, one more than “common sense in Sweden” — written in English on the ballot.
“Harry Potter,” “Mickey Mouse” and “Couch potato party” each got one vote.
Aside from such very personal picks, a number of smaller parties not represented in parliament also garnered support on Sunday.
The two largest were the pro-filesharing Pirate Party and the Feminist Initiative, which both raked in less than one percent of votes.
Among others key performers was the Pensioners Party with 0.1 percent of the vote, the Hard Alcohol Party with 237 supporters and the Healthcare Party with 185.
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