General elections were held in Sweden on 15 September 1991. Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) ''Elections in Europe: A data handbook'', p1858 The Swedish Social Democratic Party remained the largest party in the Riksdag, winning 138 of the 349 seats.Nohlen & Stöver, p1873 However, it was the party's worst showing since

1928 Events January * January – British bacteriologist Frederick Griffith reports the results of Griffith's experiment, indirectly proving the existence of DNA. * January 1 – Eastern Bloc emigration and defection: Boris Bazhan ...

with 37.7% of the vote. The election was notable due to the rise of a new

right-wing populist Right-wing populism, also called national populism and right-wing nationalism, is a political ideology that combines right-wing politics and populist rhetoric and themes. Its rhetoric employs anti- elitist sentiments, opposition to the Establ ...

party named

New Democracy New Democracy, or the New Democratic Revolution, is a concept based on Mao Zedong's Bloc of Four Social Classes theory in post-revolutionary China which argued originally that democracy in China would take a path that was decisively distinc ...

which succeeded in securing a parliamentary mandate for the first (and only) time. The four parties of the centre-right coalition (the Centre Party, People's Party,

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 ...

, and

Christian Democrats __NOTOC__ Christian democratic parties are political parties that seek to apply Christian principles to public policy. The underlying Christian democracy movement emerged in 19th-century Europe, largely under the influence of Catholic social ...

) were allocated a combined total of 171 seats, 17 more than the two left-wing parties' 154, but still fewer than the 175 necessary for a majority. Thus the centre-right bloc was dependent upon New Democracy to secure a parliamentary majority. It was able to do so, and the

Carl Bildt Nils Daniel Carl Bildt (born 15 July 1949) is a Swedish politician and diplomat who was Prime Minister of Sweden from 1991 to 1994. He was the leader of the Moderate Party from 1986 to 1999. Bildt served as Sweden's Minister for Foreign Affair ...

became

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister i ...

. One large factor in the shift between the blocs was that the

managed to reach the 4% threshold by a good margin after many previous attempts. This combined with the

Green Party A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as social justice, environmentalism and nonviolence. Greens believe that these issues are inherently related to one another as a foundation f ...

falling short of the threshold, meant vast changes to areas yielding wins for the blue bloc. Norrköping,

Västerås Västerås ( , , ) is a city in central Sweden on the shore of Lake Mälaren in the province of Västmanland, west of Stockholm. The city had a population of 127,799 at the end of 2019, out of the municipal total of 154,049. Västerås is the se ...

and

Örebro Örebro ( , ) is the sixth-largest city in Sweden, the seat of Örebro Municipality, and capital of the Örebro County. It is situated by the Närke Plain, near the lake Hjälmaren, a few kilometers inland along the small river Svartån, and ...

, main urban areas inside the left-wing industrial belt of central Sweden, all voted blue for the first time for generations. Even so, they did only assemble pluralities as opposed to majorities in all three. The centre-right bloc also made vast gains in the capital region, the Moderate Party being the largest both in Stockholm Municipality and the surrounding Stockholm County. Led by the strong Moderate vote,

Malmö Malmö (, ; da, Malmø ) is the largest city in the Swedish county (län) of Scania (Skåne). It is the third-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg, and the sixth-largest city in the Nordic region, with a municipal pop ...

also flipped to a blue plurality, overturning another historical Social Democrat stronghold. This election was also famous for the performance of the

Donald Duck Party The Donald Duck Party () is a Swedish joke political party named after the Disney character Donald Duck. The party has received joke or protest votes without actually existing for several years; however, before the 2002 Swedish general election ...

, which collected 1,535 votes, enough to make it the 9th largest in Sweden. The

protest party A protest vote (also called a blank, null, spoiled, or " none of the above" vote) is a vote cast in an election to demonstrate dissatisfaction with the choice of candidates or the current political system. Protest voting takes a variety of forms ...

's platform consisted of the demand for "free liquor and wider sidewalks."

Results

Seat distribution

By municipality

Image:Sweden.1991.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.1991.coalition.largest.cart.svg,

Cartogram A cartogram (also called a value-area map or an anamorphic map, the latter common among German-speakers) is a thematic map of a set of features (countries, provinces, etc.), in which their geographic size is altered to be directly proportiona ...

of the map to the left with each municipality rescaled to the number of valid votes cast. Image:Sweden.1988.to.1991.coalition.voting.shift.map.svg, Map showing the voting shifts from the 1988 to the 1991 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.1991.coalition.purple.map.svg, Votes by municipality as a scale from red/Left-wing bloc to blue/Centre-right bloc. Image:Sweden.1991.coalition.purple.cart.svg,

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 A general officer is an officer of high rank in the armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry. In some usages the term "general officer" refers to a rank above colonel."general, adj. and n.". OED ...

Sweden Sweden