Magdalena Andersson's meeting with Sweden's parliamentary speaker has been postponed from Monday to Tuesday, according to Dagens Nyheter. At that meeting, the Social Democrat leader is expected to tell speaker Andreas Norlén whether or not she has assembled a governing base.
The delay was requested by Andersson herself, the Riksdag said in a press release cited by Dagens Nyheter. Norlén had previously said she would report back to him by Monday, 12 October.
Everything so far points to positions that remain locked, with no red-green government in place. "My guess is that this will take a while," political scientist Malena Rosén Sundström told Dagens Nyheter.
Why it matters
Sweden has now gone four weeks since roughly 6.8 million voters cast their ballots, and the result resembles the difficult government formations that followed the two previous elections, Dagens Nyheter reports.
The arithmetic is tight. The Tidö parties hold 173 seats against 176 for the others, but campaign promises and so-called red lines have blocked a simple solution. At the centre of the standoff is the Centre Party, which will not tolerate a government that includes the Left Party, while the Left Party is demanding ministerial posts in exchange for tolerating an S-led government.
As leader of the largest party, Andersson holds the speaker's mandate to sound out the parties she has sat in opposition against for the past four years. Dagens Nyheter notes this is the second time she has received it: she returned the first mandate after the Left Party said it preferred Norlén over the Social Democrats' candidate for speaker, Johanna Haraldsson.
A Friday meeting that broke no ground
On Friday, senior politicians from the Social Democrats, the Left Party, the Greens and the Centre Party met at Högberga gård on Lidingö, alongside representatives of business, the labour market and the justice system, according to Dagens Nyheter.
Andersson described the gathering as "constructive and good," but it produced no agreements on the deadlocks and no changes to the parties' demands. Contacts between the parties continued over the weekend.
Rosén Sundström, a docent and lecturer at Lund University's department of political science, told Dagens Nyheter that any softening of demands is likely to take time. She said it was at least mildly positive that the parties had spent the day together.
What a vote would require
A board-laying plenary session had been entered into the Riksdag administration's calendar for 2pm on Monday, before the Andersson–Norlén meeting was moved. At such a session, the speaker can put Andersson forward to the chamber as prime minister, provided the red-green talks have shifted the deadlocks. Under that procedure, the proposal must be tabled once, then again the following day, so members have time to consider it before any vote.
Rosén Sundström put the odds of a vote in this round as small but not zero. She said that from outside the four parties' rooms, all that is known is that positions and red lines remain locked, and that no red-green government can take shape while that holds.
Swedish prime ministerial votes run on negative parliamentarism, meaning a candidate does not need majority support — only fewer than half of the 349 members voting no. Doubtful members can press a yellow button to abstain. Dagens Nyheter notes that Stefan Löfven was elected prime minister in 2019 with 115 yes votes, against 153 no votes and 77 abstentions.
The Left Party has said its Riksdag members will vote no to Andersson rather than abstain unless they are promised ministerial posts. Combined with the Tidö parties' no votes, that would be enough to sink her in a vote.
Rosén Sundström told Dagens Nyheter she does not expect the Left Party to abstain at this stage. In her view, the process likely needs to continue and stretch out in time before some kind of compromise becomes conceivable.
The extra election question
If the Riksdag rejects the speaker's prime ministerial proposal four times, an extra election follows automatically. Under the 1974 form of government, that has never happened. Dagens Nyheter notes the closest case came after the 2018 election, when both Löfven and Ulf Kristersson were rejected in three votes each before Löfven was tolerated.
Rosén Sundström said it would take a great deal for an extra election to be triggered. She pointed to Centre Party politician Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist, who has said in recent days that she is not opposed to one, but noted that the Centre Party has a strong financial position, and that holding an election also costs money. Most parties do not want one, Rosén Sundström said, and if that is genuinely what is at stake, they will likely try to find a solution.
After Tuesday's meeting, Norlén is to confer with the deputy speakers about how the process should proceed.
What to watch: whether Andersson tells the speaker on Tuesday that she has a governing base, and whether the speaker then moves to put her name before the chamber.
