General elections were held in Sweden on 17 September 2006, to elect members to the Riksdag, the Swedish national legislature. All 349 seats were up for election: 310 fixed seats in 29 constituencies and 39 adjustment seats, used to ensure that parties have representation in the Riksdag proportional to their share of the national vote. The electoral system used was semi-open list proportional representation using the Sainte-Laguë method of allocating seats. Elections for County and Municipal councils were also held on the same day.

Fredrik Reinfeldt from the Moderate Party was able to form a majority government together with the Centre Party, Liberal People's Party and the Christian Democrats following the election. The Social Democrats were ousted after twelve years in power. It was the country's first majority government since the second Fälldin cabinet fell in 1981.

Reinfeldt reached out to working-class votes in the re-branding as the 'New Moderates', which resulted in sizeable gains in historically left-wing locations in densely populated areas. As a result, several municipalities that had never voted blue before in Stockholm County flipped. This, combined with a landslide overall win in the capital region as a whole and strong showings in Scania tipped the balance in favour of the Alliance. The centre-right bloc also flipped the crucial populous municipalities Gothenburg, Linköping, Uppsala and Västerås.

The Social Democrats recorded around 35% of the overall support, which was the party's worst showing in the post-war era. Although the red-green parties received a higher proportion of the vote than in the 1991 hung parliament loss, the coalition fell short of a majority by seven seats, or two percentage points of the popular vote.

The Alliance did not reach 50% of the vote, courtesy of several minor parties gathering up 5.67% of the overall vote. This was the final election before the Sweden Democrats entered the Riksdag, with the party getting close to three percent of the vote, falling short by just above one percentage point. The election also saw the party get above 10% in Bjuv Municipality in its Scanian heartlands and above the parliamentary threshold in the country's five southernmost constituencies.

Campaign The campaigning for the 2006 election began early, as the opposition decided to present itself as a viable alternative government by forming an alliance: Alliance for Sweden. This alliance was negotiated at a meeting held in the village of Högfors, home to the chairman of the Centre Party, Maud Olofsson. The meeting ended on 31 August 2004 with the presentation of a joint declaration outlining the principles under which the four parties intended to run in the election. One year later a similar meeting was held at Bankeryd, home of Göran Hägglund, leader of the Christian Democrats. See Alliance for Sweden for further information.

The Alliance enjoyed a leading position for over a year over the red-green parties, according to most polls. However the gap between the two blocs (s, v, and mp are assumed to work together) began to close rapidly in January 2006, and the red-green parties took the lead in May 2006; indeed they were ahead of the Alliance in every poll conducted in May and June. However, there was a late shift in opinion back to the Alliance during the summer: in mid-August all polls showed the Alliance leading the red-green parties comfortably.

Unemployment

The Social Democrat government's perceived failure to reduce unemployment was a major issue in the campaign, especially considering the good performance of the Swedish economy (when compared with that of the rest of Europe). The opposition also argued that "real" unemployment was much higher than the official figure of 4.8% (as of May 2006). They quoted a figure of 1,037,000 (or 17.9% of the labour force in January 2006) for those who are "outside the labour market because they do not have a job or are studying". If those who are "wholly or partially outside the labour market" are included then the figure rises to 1,700,000. This gloomy view of the unemployment situation was raised by Jan Edling, a former economist for the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO). However, compared with other OECD countries Sweden has a low "broad unemployment", as was pointed out by the Green Party's Peter Eriksson in the debate.Moderaternas fejkade arbetslöshetssiffror , Peter Eriksson, September 16, 2006

Alliance for Sweden proposed to address the problem by cutting income tax for the lowest income earners (by increasing the tax-free allowance), cutting the payroll tax (and abolishing it for parts of the service sector), and making wages paid for household work tax-deductible. Critics of the proposed tax reforms said that, because the cuts would be funded by reducing unemployment benefit and sick pay, they would be harming the most needy in society rather than helping them as Alliance for Sweden claimed.

In addition the Centre Party proposed a special youth contract of employment for those aged under 26, allowing their term of employment to be ended by their employer up to two years after they begin work.Centerns ungdomsavtal får inte politiskt stöd , Sydsvenskan, 2 April 2006. This controversial proposal (not adopted by the Alliance as a whole) was intended to increase youth employment by making taking on new employees less risky for the employer, but it was criticised by the red-green parties as reducing job security for the young. A similar contract introduced by the French government (the Contrat première embauche) caused demonstrations and riots against the legislation across France.Chirac calls for urgent talks after Paris violence, The Guardian, March 18, 2006Police fire rubber bullets at crowds as Paris labour law protest turns into riot, The Guardian, March 17, 2006 In a debate article in Göteborgs-Posten on 21 March 2006, Wanja Lundby-Wedin, Chairperson of LO, wrote: "[Maud Olofsson's] new proposal to abolish job security for the young will not result in more jobs. It will only lead to increased insecurity and an even larger exclusion... More than half of youths under 25 who work already have an insecure job; a time-limited job of some sort. This is most usual among our young female members. The most insecure jobs, 'need-employment' or the so-called 'phone and run locum' is entirely on the employer's terms. Every morning many people sit and wait for their employer to ring. Am I needed today or not?".LO: Maud Olofsson bör lära sig av protesterna i Paris , Göteborgs-Posten, March 21, 2006 Olofsson replied two days later in the same newspaper: <blockquote> "What LO'''s Chairperson has not understood is that those youths who already have a job are not covered by our proposal. It does however give a new opportunity for the 146,000 youths who are wholly or partially living in the exclusion the Social Democrats have created... One of the main reasons why companies don't take on new staff is that the risk is too large. If the gamble doesn't pay off then the costs are too great. By lowering the threshold for job creation we are convinced that many youths will be able to take their first steps onto a labour market that they today have never been able to set foot on. We are equally convinced that the great majority of these youths will show their employers that they were right to dare to employ them".Vi vill hjälpa ungdomar som LO inte vill se , Göteborgs-Posten, March 23, 2006 </blockquote> A survey carried out by the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise (Svenskt Näringsliv) indicated that 41% of Swedish companies believe that such a contract would increase their willingness to hire young people "to a great extent" and that 51% believe that it would increase it "to a certain extent". 7% of those surveyed said that they did not think that they would be more willing to hire youth if the contract was to become available.Företagen tror på ungdomsavtal, Svenskt Näringsliv, March 21, 2006

Computer break-in by Liberal People's Party members

On 4 September 2006, only two weeks before the general election, the Social Democratic Party reported to the police a computer break-in into its internal network. It has been reported that members of the Liberal People's Party copied sensitive information, not yet officially released, on at least two occasions for the purpose of counter-attacking Social Democratic political propositions. On 5 September the Liberal Party Secretary voluntarily resigned. After the break-in, investigations were opened against leading members of the Liberal People's Party under suspicion of criminal activity relating to the 4 September computer infringement affair.

Opinion polls The charts below show the results of pre-election polls conducted by the five major polling institutes in Sweden.

TEMO has a summary of all polls conducted since the election in 2002, and is therefore cited as the reference for each poll.

Temo PartyAugust 2006July 2006June 2006May 2006April 2006March 2006February 2006January 2006December 2005November 2005October 2005September 2005Lastelection Social Democrats (s)37.7%34.8%36.8%38.3%36.5%34.9%36.3%34.3%34.5%35.7%32.1%35.5%39.9% Moderate Party (m)28.0%28.6%26.3%26.9%27.9%29.2%28.4%30.9%30.3%27.6%31.6%31.4%15.3% Liberal People's Party (fp)9.8%10.2%9.9%8.7%9.9%9.7%10.5%10.0%10.4%9.4%9.4%8.7%13.4% Christian Democrats (kd)5.4%5.6%5.6%5.9%6.3%6.4%5.1%4.4%4.9%4.0%4.3%3.7%9.1% Left Party (v)3.6%4.7%5.9%5.4%5.1%6.2%6.0%6.2%5.2%6.1%5.9%5.7%8.4% Centre Party (c)6.1%5.7%5.8%6.3%6.0%5.3%6.2%5.6%6.2%6.5%5.6%6.8%6.2% Green Party (mp)5.3%5.8%4.5%4.9%5.3%5.1%4.6%4.8%5.2%4.8%4.6%4.7%4.6% June List (jl) - - - - - -1.2%1.0%3.2%4.5% - -NA  Alliance for Sweden (m, c, fp, kd)49.3%50.1%47.6%47.8%50.1%50.6%50.2%50.9%51.8%47.5%50.9%50.6%44.0% Red-Green bloc (s, v, mp)46.5%45.2%47.2%48.6%46.8%46.2%46.9%45.3%44.9%46.6%42.6%45.9%52.9% Undecided (?)22.6%22.8%18.6%19.6%20.3%21.2%NA%NA%NA%NA%NA%NA%NA

Sifo Party7 September 2006August 2006August 2006August 2006June 2006May 2006April 2006March 2006February 2006January 2006December 2005Lastelection Social Democrats (s)35.7%35.8%34.1%34.6%37.6%36.6%36.2%36.2%34.9%35.3%33.2%39.9% Moderate Party (m)26.0%24.3%28.6%26.7%26.9%25.2%26.2%28.2%28.1%30.9%29.7%15.3% Liberal People's Party (fp)7.6%10.2%11.1%10.3%9.2%11.7%11.5%10.2%10.7%9.3%10.6%13.4% Christian Democrats (kd)7.5%6.5%7.0%6.9%5.0%5.2%5.4%5.9%6.0%4.8%4.6%9.1% Left Party (v)7.1%5.6%5.9%5.6%6.1%6.8%6.4%5.6%6.0%6.7%6%8.4% Centre Party (c)6.2%6.7%4.9%6.6%6.2%5.8%5.3%6.7%5.8%6.9%6.7%6.2% Green Party (mp)5.7%6.0%4.5%5.9%5.2%5.5%5.2%4.4%4.9%4.1%4.5%4.6% June List (jl) - - - - - - - 2.2% - - -NA  Alliance for Sweden (m, c, fp, kd)47.3%47.7%51.5%50.5%47.3%47.9%48.4%51.0%50.6%51.9%51.6%44.0% Red-Green bloc (s, v, mp)48.2%47.3%44.9%46.1%48.9%48.9%47.8%46.2%45.8%46.1%43.7%52.9% Undecided (?) -15.1%20.0%19.2%17.6%17.4%18.9%16.2%17.8%17.9%20.5%NA

Demoskop PartyAugust 2006July 2006June 2006May 2006April 2006March 2006February 2006January 2006December 2005November 2005October 2005September 2005August 2005July 2005Lastelection Social Democrats (s)33.7%35.7%37.4%36.2%37.8%36.4%36.3%37.9%31.9%33.1%35.3%35.8%31.7%29.3%39.9% Moderate Party (m)30.4%30.9%27.4%30.3%30.0%31.0%31.6%30.8%30.5%31.3%30.8%30.6%31.6%35.8%15.3% Liberal People's Party (fp)9.9%8.0%8.8%10.0%8.8%9.3%9.1%10.1%9.7%9.3%11%8.7%10.8%9.7%13.4% Christian Democrats (kd)5.5%5.3%5.7%4.0%4.9%3.6%4.0%3.6%4.5%3.1%3.3%4.0%4.8%4.3%9.1% Left Party (v)6.9%4.4%6.9%7.1%5.2%4.5%7.2%5.6%6.7%7.3%5.9%8.1%5.2%6.2%8.4% Centre Party (c)4.6%7.3%5.4%3.6%4.8%5.9%4.7%4.2%6.3%6.7%4.7%5.8%7.8%6.5%6.2% Green Party (mp)5.2%4.2%6.2%5.5%4.9%5.1%5.5%6.2%6.2%4.2%4.2%4.4%6.2%4.7%4.6%  Alliance for Sweden (m, c, fp, kd)50.5%51.5%47.3%47.9%48.5%49.8%49.4%48.7%51.0%50.4%49.8%49.1%55.0%56.3%44.0% Red-Green bloc (s, v, mp)45.8%44.3%50.5%48.8%47.9%46.0%49.0%49.7%44.8%44.6%45.4%48.3%43.1%40.2%52.9%

Skop