Following a disappointing performance in the 2026 Swedish general election, senior figures within the far-right Sweden Democrats have pointed to immigrant voters and newly naturalized Swedish citizens as the primary cause for the right-wing bloc's defeat. Tobias Andersson, one of the party's top MPs, took to X at 1 a.m. on election night to claim that the Tidö parties—the Moderates, Sweden Democrats, Christian Democrats, and Liberals—lost due to the 200,000-plus foreigners who had gained citizenship since the government took office in October 2022.
Andersson argued that had the government followed the Sweden Democrats' advice and imposed a total freeze on new citizenships as soon as they took office, the right-wing coalition would have secured a victory.
This sentiment was echoed by Fredrik Kärrholm, a hard-right MP for the Moderate Party. In an article for the British political magazine The Spectator, Kärrholm argued that the government made a strategic error by failing to impose a moratorium on new citizenships. He went so far as to describe the voting results in the district of Rosengård as a result that might have made Saddam Hussein jealous.
In response, Social Democratic leader Magdalena Andersson dismissed these claims as a conspiracy theory, noting that one could just as easily make the same claim about other demographic groups, such as mariners, assistant nurses, or people from Norrland.
Data from the SVT Valu exit poll indicates that the four Tidö parties would indeed have won 51 percent of the vote, compared to 48 percent for the opposition, if only votes from individuals with Swedish backgrounds were counted. However, analysts point out that this logic is highly selective. For instance, if all votes from women were excluded, the same right-wing parties would have won 55 percent of the vote, allowing them to just as easily blame women for their defeat.
Similarly, if the votes of blue-collar workers were excluded, the right-wing bloc would have lost, and the Liberals would have failed to stay in parliament. Furthermore, voters over the age of 65 as a group voted for the left-wing parties. A similar retroactive analysis of the 2022 election shows that the four parties would have received 52 percent of the vote had non-Swedish background voters been excluded, suggesting the trend is not unique to 2026.
Regarding the specific claim about the influence of immigrant districts, the numbers show a clear left-wing dominance in those areas. In Spånga, a voting district in the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby, the Left Party won a 51 percent majority, while the Social Democrats received 39.7 percent, with no other party receiving more than 3 percent.
In Biskopsgården Norra, a district in Gothenburg with a high proportion of residents with immigrant backgrounds, the Social Democrats won 43.5 percent and the Left Party 40.4 percent, while the Sweden Democrats received 4.1 percent.
In Rosengård, a long-standing left-wing stronghold in Malmö, the Social Democrats won 54 percent and the Left Party 41.2 percent, with the Green Party receiving 1.4 percent.
The Swedish Election Authority reports that there were 271,335 more people eligible to vote in the 2026 parliamentary election than in 2022. This figure includes both newly naturalized citizens and individuals who reached the voting age of 18 during that period. Records show that 20,000 foreigners received Swedish citizenship in 2022 after the Tidö government took office, followed by 67,789 in 2023, 62,989 in 2024, 37,494 in 2025, and 17,851 in the first half of 2026, totaling 206,123 newly enfranchised potential voters with foreign backgrounds.
However, there is no available data confirming which political parties these newly naturalized first-time voters supported.
Exit polls reveal that the electoral shift was not solely driven by voters with non-European backgrounds. A significant change was observed among voters with backgrounds in other European countries. The four opposition parties increased their lead over the Tidö bloc within this demographic by four percentage points between 2022 and 2026, giving the opposition a nine-point lead.
Approximately 30 percent of the newly naturalized first-time voters in this election—nearly 62,000 people—have a background in another European country, while 64 percent have a background outside Europe. These figures suggest that the electoral picture is significantly more complex than the narrative presented by the Sweden Democrats.
