Sweden's parliament rejects Centre leader as PM, gridlock drags on

Swedish lawmakers turned down Centre Party leader Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist as prime minister on Tuesday, a result nobody in Stockholm expected to go any other way. The vote marks the second of four possible ballots before the country is forced back to the polls. Parliament's speaker has already lined up Moderate party leader Ulf Kristersson, who has led a right-wing government since 2022, as the next to try building a cabinet.

The deadlock traces back to September's election, which handed the centre-left opposition a majority with 176 of 349 seats. But the four parties that back Social Democrats leader Magdalena Andersson as prime minister still can't agree on who else gets a seat at the governing table. A majority in seats, it turns out, is not the same as a majority on a cabinet.

Thand Ringqvist, whose Centre Party is parliament's fifth-biggest, gave up on forging a centrist coalition last week and has said she has no ambition to be prime minister in the next government. Lawmakers had already rejected Andersson's bid for a minority Social Democrat cabinet on October 15, also as expected.

Now the ball lands with Kristersson. There is little sign he can cobble together a majority, and his party is the second-biggest after the Social Democrats. If he stumbles, the task of forming a government could swing back to Andersson at a later stage, according to Reuters.

One wrinkle in the backdrop: recent opinion polls show support for the Moderates has climbed since the election. That won't break the arithmetic on its own, but it gives Kristersson's side something to point at as the four-ballot countdown ticks toward a snap election.