General elections were held in

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

on 18 September 1994.

Dieter Nohlen Dieter Nohlen (born 6 November 1939) is a German academic and political scientist. He currently holds the position of Emeritus Professor of Political Science in the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences of the University of Heidelberg. An expe ...

& Philip Stöver (2010) ''Elections in Europe: A data handbook'', p1858 The

Swedish Social Democratic Party The Swedish Social Democratic Party, formally the Swedish Social Democratic Workers' Party ( sv, Sveriges socialdemokratiska arbetareparti ; S/SAP), usually referred to as The Social Democrats ( sv, link=no, Socialdemokraterna ), is a social-d ...

remained the largest party in the

Riksdag The Riksdag (, ; also sv, riksdagen or ''Sveriges riksdag'' ) is the legislature and the supreme decision-making body of Sweden. Since 1971, the Riksdag has been a unicameral legislature with 349 members (), elected proportionally and se ...

, winning 161 of the 349 seats.Nohlen & Stöver, p1873 Led by

Ingvar Carlsson Gösta Ingvar Carlsson (born 9 November 1934) is a Swedish politician who twice served as Prime Minister of Sweden, first from 1986 to 1991 and again from 1994 to 1996. He was leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party from 1986 to 1996. He i ...

, the party returned to power and formed a minority government after the election. This was the final time the Social Democrats recorded 45% of the vote before the party's vote share steeply declined four years later and never recovered. The Greens also returned to the Riksdag after a three-year absence. The election saw the largest bloc differences for a generation, with the red-green parties making sizeable inroads into the blue heartlands of inner

Småland Småland () is a historical province () in southern Sweden. Småland borders Blekinge, Scania, Halland, Västergötland, Östergötland and the island Öland in the Baltic Sea. The name Småland literally means ''Small Lands''. The Latinized fo ...

and Western Götaland, at an even higher rate than

1988 File:1988 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The oil platform Piper Alpha explodes and collapses in the North Sea, killing 165 workers; The USS Vincennes (CG-49) mistakenly shoots down Iran Air Flight 655; Australia celebrates its Australian ...

. The Social Democrats gathered more than 50% of the vote in all five northern counties, Blekinge, Södermanland, Västmanland and Örebro. In spite of the loss of power, the

Moderates Moderate is an ideological category which designates a rejection of radical or extreme views, especially in regard to politics and religion. A moderate is considered someone occupying any mainstream position avoiding extreme views. In American ...

retained their 80 seats and gained 0.5% from

1991 File:1991 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Boris Yeltsin, elected as Russia's first president, waves the new flag of Russia after the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, orchestrated by Soviet hardliners; Mount Pinatubo erupts in the Phil ...

. Due to the sizeable losses of their coalition, the net difference between the blocs was 53, with the red-greens making up 201 and the blue parties 148. The Christian Democrats fared poorly, merely beating the threshold by 3,752 votes. New Democracy, a right-wing populist political party which had entered the Riksdag three years earlier, performed poorly, losing most of its voters and all of its seats in the Riksdag. In total the party's vote share dropped from 6.7% in 1991 to 1.2% in 1994. The election introduced an extended electoral cycle of four years, replacing the previous three-year terms. It was also notable for being the first electoral event in the world whose official results were published live on the nascent World Wide Web (other countries had previously used the then-fledgling Internet to officially broadcast election results, but with simpler methods such as e-mail lists).General aspects of Sweden's electoral system
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Results

Seat distribution

By municipality

Image:Sweden.1994.coalition.largest.map.svg, Votes by municipality. The municipalities are the color of the party that got the most votes ''within'' the coalition that won relative majority. Image:Sweden.1994.coalition.largest.cart.svg, Cartogram of the map to the left with each municipality rescaled to the number of valid votes cast. Image:Sweden.1991.to.1994.coalition.voting.shift.map.svg, Map showing the voting shifts from the 1991 to the 1994 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. Image:Sweden.1994.coalition.purple.map.svg, Votes by municipality as a scale from red/Left-wing bloc to blue/Centre-right bloc. Image:Sweden.1994.coalition.purple.cart.svg, 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.

References

{{Swedish elections General elections in Sweden

General