Opposition blue bloc leads in Swedish parliamentary elections

Stockholm [Sweden], September 12: Preliminary results of the 2022 Swedish parliamentary elections showed early Monday morning that the opposition blue bloc gained 49.7 percent of votes, narrowly heading in the race.
The blue bloc comprises the Moderate Party, the Christian Democrats, the Liberal Party and the Sweden Democrats.
The red bloc of the Social Democratic Party, the Left Party, the Green Party, and the Centre Party gained 48.8 percent of votes.
The top three biggest parties are the Social Democratic Party, the Sweden Democrats and the Moderate Party, with 30.5, 20.7 and 19 percent respectively.
With 92 percent of the votes counted, the blue bloc had gathered 176 parliamentary seats against 173 for the red bloc, putting the election results on a knife edge. There are 349 seats in the Swedish parliament and votes cast outside of Sweden would be counted later this week.
"As far as the government issue is concerned, there is a long way to go before any conclusions can be drawn," Swedish Television's political commentator Mats Knutson was quoted as saying.
Polling stations opened in Sweden on Sunday morning in a tight election of competing red and blue blocs. Preliminary statistics also show that 81.3 percent of the electorate participated in the current parliamentary elections, about 5 percent less than the last elections in 2018.
Source: Xinhua