Swedish general election, 1998

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20 September 1998

2002 →

All 349 seats to the Riksdag
175 seats were needed for a majority

	First party	Second party	Third party

Leader	Göran Persson	Carl Bildt	Gudrun Schyman
Party	Social Democratic	Moderate	Left
Alliance	Centre-left	Centre-right
Last election	161	80	22
Seats won	131	82	43
Seat change	30	2	21
Popular vote	1,914,426	1,204,926	631,011
Percentage	36.4%	22.9%	12.0%

	Fourth party	Fifth party	Sixth party

Leader	Alf Svensson	Lennart Daléus	Lars Leijonborg
Party	Christian Democrats	Centre	Liberal People's
Alliance	Centre-right	Centre-right	Centre-right
Last election	15	27	26
Seats won	42	18	17
Seat change	27	9	9
Popular vote	619,046	269,762	248,076
Percentage	11.8%	5.1%	4.7%

	Seventh party

Leader	Marianne Samuelsson Birger Schlaug
Party	Green
Alliance	Centre-left
Last election	18
Seats won	16
Seat change	2
Popular vote	236,699
Percentage	4.5%

PM before election

Göran Persson
Social Democratic

Elected PM

Göran Persson
Social Democratic

General elections were held in Sweden on 20 September 1998. The Swedish Social Democratic Party remained the largest party in the Riksdag, winning 131 of the 349 seats.

The incumbent Social Democratic minority government, led by Göran Persson, was returned to power despite losing seats and receiving fewer votes than in their 1991 defeat. They remained in power with support from the Left Party and the Green Party. While the three left-wing parties saw a net loss of 11 seats, the Left Party nearly doubled its representation in the Riksdag. This reflected how many Social Democratic voters were dissatisfied with the policies of the government, which had implemented austerity measures to reduce the budget deficit.

Votes by municipality. The municipalities are the color of the party that got the most votes within the coalition that won relative majority.

Cartogram of the map to the left with each municipality rescaled to the number of valid votes cast.

Map showing the voting shifts from the 1994 to the 1998 election. Darker blue indicates a municipality voted more towards the parties that formed the centre-right bloc. Darker red indicates a municipality voted more towards the parties that form the left-wing bloc.

Votes by municipality as a scale from red/Left-wing bloc to blue/Centre-right bloc.

Cartogram of vote with each municipality rescaled in proportion to number of valid votes cast. Deeper blue represents a relative majority for the centre-right coalition, brighter red represents a relative majority for the left-wing coalition.

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