Sweden held its parliamentary election Sunday, September 13, 2026, in a race international coverage had billed as a test of whether the far-right Sweden Democrats would make a historic breakthrough. With 94.7% of votes counted, the opposition Social Democrat-led left bloc leads 176 seats to 173 in the 349-seat Riksdag - a three-seat margin narrow enough that the official count, due within a week, could still move it. Polymarket's "Next Prime Minister of Sweden" market moved within 20 minutes of polls closing at 18:00 UTC: incumbent PM Ulf Kristersson's contract, 34.5c beforehand, has fallen to 10.5c; Social Democrat leader Magdalena Andersson's has risen from 66c to 87.5c, as of 2026-09-14 13:05 UTC.
01The electionA three-seat margin, and a "breakthrough" that didn't happen
With 94.7% of the vote counted, the Social Democrats remain Sweden's largest single party at 28.06% (100 seats, down 7 from 2022) - but the real story is the bloc math. The left bloc - Social Democrats, Greens, Left Party, and Centre Party - won 3,138,052 votes (49.44%) for 176 seats, edging out Kristersson's right bloc - Moderates, Sweden Democrats, Christian Democrats, and Liberals - on 3,109,452 votes (48.99%) for 173. Turnout was 79.89%. Reporting on the count Sunday night described the race as too close to call, and the Swedish Election Authority's official tally isn't due for about a week.
Kristersson has governed since 2022 with a Moderate-Christian Democrat-Liberal coalition, kept in office by the Sweden Democrats' external, no-cabinet-seat support. Going in, the pre-election storyline was about whether the Sweden Democrats would finally join government outright or overtake the Moderates as the larger party on the right - a Sunday preview from CNN framed the vote as the far-right "eyeing a historic breakthrough." Instead the Sweden Democrats lost 11 seats and fell to third place nationally, behind both the Social Democrats and the Moderates (70 seats, up 2) - the opposite of a breakthrough.
02The chartThe PM market flips within 20 minutes of poll close
Both contracts sat close to flat through election-day trading - Kristersson in the low-mid 30s, Andersson in the mid-60s - until Swedish polls closed at 18:00 UTC (20:00 local). Kristersson's price cratered to an 8c low by 18:10 UTC as the first counts landed; Andersson's jumped to a 90.5c high five minutes later. Neither move was final, though: with the bloc margin sitting at just three seats, the two contracts spent the rest of the night trading against each other as more districts reported - Kristersson briefly recovered to a 33c high around 21:00 UTC before crashing back under 10c twenty minutes later, and Andersson dipped as low as 72c in the same window. By Monday morning both had settled into the ranges they hold now.
03What's priced nowSecond place flips harder than first
NEXT PRIME MINISTER OF SWEDEN YES
Magdalena Andersson (S) 88c
Ulf Kristersson (M) 11c
Jimmie Åkesson (SD) <1c
Ebba Busch (KD) <1c
Andersson's book shows more conviction than Kristersson's: 8,242 shares resting at the 87c bid against 469 offered at 88c, versus a thin 1,590-share bid and 1,390-share ask around Kristersson's 10c/11c touch - a candidate the market isn't ready to write off given the margin, but isn't sizing up either. The event has traded $1.64M over the past 24 hours on $1.26M of resting liquidity.
The sharper move sits one market over. Polymarket also lists a "2nd Place" contract, separate from who becomes PM, and it inverted almost completely: the Sweden Democrats' shot at finishing second - the market's read on that "breakthrough" - fell from 76.5c to 0.05c, while the Moderates' rose from 23.5c to 99.95c. Both books are now one-sided: 9,046 shares offered at a fraction of a cent against the Sweden Democrats, 3,445 bid at 99.9c for the Moderates, with no one left to take the other side. The vote count tells the same story directly - the Moderates polled 19.86% against the Sweden Democrats' 17.56%, a gap that wasn't in the pre-election polling averages.
04Next testWhat the official count and coalition talks move next
A three-seat bloc margin leaves two things still open: whether the official count due within the week holds the left bloc's lead, and who - Andersson, or Kristersson if the numbers move - can actually assemble a governing majority. Both are the kind of overnight-moving story polymarket-tui is built to sit open through: the order book and price chart share one screen, so a contract that crashes from 34c to 8c in ten minutes shows up as it happens, not as a headline read after the fact.
$ uv tool install polymarket-tui
$ polymarket-tui
No account is needed to browse markets, books, and charts. The install page has Homebrew and one-liner options.