For years, the right across the West has noted that mass immigration has been a boon for left-wing parties, which are essentially importing a new voting base. Sweden’s latest election appears to once again affirm this view, with the left narrowly winning the election, in large part due to their overwhelming support from those with a non-European background in Sweden.
Sweden’s 2026 election produced one of the narrowest results in recent memory. With roughly 94.7 percent of votes counted, the center-left opposition holds 176 seats against 173 for the parties backing outgoing Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.
The left-wing Social Democrats remain the largest party at 28 percent, enough to put Magdalena Andersson in position to try to form a government.
A striking pattern in SVT’s VALU exit poll helps explain how the result took shape, with 70 percent of voters of non-European origin backing the left-wing bloc of Social Democrats, Left Party, Greens, and Center.
“VALU shows a very clear political dividing line. Among voters with non-European backgrounds, S, V, MP, and C together receive 70 percent, while the Tidö parties receive 27. This is a voter group whose party sympathies differ sharply from the electorate as a whole – and which therefore has significance for the long-term electoral math,” wrote Swedish political scientist and author Daniel Schatz on X.
VALU visar en mycket tydlig politisk skiljelinje. Bland väljare med utomeuropeisk bakgrund får S, V, MP och C tillsammans 70 procent, medan Tidöpartierna får 27.
Det är en väljargrupp vars partisympatier skiljer sig kraftigt från väljarkåren som helhet – och som därför har… pic.twitter.com/m6J7pz2ySV
— Daniel Schatz (@drdanielschatz) September 13, 2026VALU defines the group as people who themselves, or whose parents, grew up outside Europe. Their votes broke down for the Left at 21 percent, Social Democrats at 38 percent, Greens at 7 percent, and Center at 4 percent.
Before the election, the leader of the right-wing Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Åkesson, also wrote that the left’s strategy is to gain votes from Swedes with a foreign background even as they lose votes from native ethnic Swedes:
“It’s about power. The Social Democrats’ decades-long campaign for increased immigration from the Muslim world has never been a coincidence. On the contrary, it seems to be a long-term strategy. The election promise from Magdalena Andersson to grant citizenship to up to 100,000 immigrants, based on the old and undemanding regulatory framework, should be seen in the same light,” he wrote.
Det handlar om makt.
Socialdemokraternas mångåriga kamp för ökad invandring från den muslimska världen har aldrig varit en slump. Tvärtom tycks det vara en långsiktig strategi.
Vallöftet från Magdalena Andersson att ge uppåt 100 000 invandrare medborgarskap, utifrån det gamla… pic.twitter.com/Tz2jrUfzVP
— Jimmie Åkesson (@jimmieakesson) August 26, 2026“When Swedish voters flee the party, you need votes from elsewhere, and mass immigration from the Muslim world then appears to be an attractive way to circumvent the will of the Swedish people,’ he added.
In 2022, Swedes with a foreign backgroun already attracted around 68 percent of this electorate. Earlier surveys of Muslim voters had placed combined support for the Social Democrats, Left and Greens near 85 percent, with the Social Democrats alone above 61 percent. This slice of the electorate has expanded rapidly over the years.
About 13 percent of eligible voters, close to 1 million people, now have non-European origins, up from just over 3 percent in 2002 and 0.3 percent in 1982.
Many arrived from Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia through asylum, family reunification and earlier, more open immigration rules.
Sweden does not record religion in official statistics, yet estimates indicate that Swedish citizens from Muslim-majority countries number in the hundreds of thousands. Together, with other voters of non-European background, they form a reliable base for the left even as much of the rest of the country has shifted toward tighter immigration and crime policies.
Remix News reported on polling already six years ago which showed that a majority of Swedes wanted to tighten immigration substantially. While the native ethnic Swedish population has swung to the right, foreigners have incentives to vote for the left to ensure their families and fellow countrymen can arrive in Sweden unimpeded. Foreigners are also more likely to benefit from social welfare, which left-wing parties promote.
The overwhelming vote for the left from those with a non-European background has been seen across the Western world. In Germany, for instance, the Left Party has proposed giving voting rights to all foreigners who have lived in Germany for five years, regardless of whether they have citizenship. Similar proposals have been put forward by other left-wing parties in the country.
