1985 Swedish general election

1985 Swedish general election

← 1982 15 September 1985 1988 →
All 349 seats in the Riksdag 175 seats needed for a majority
First party Second party Third party   Leader Olof Palme Ulf Adelsohn Bengt Westerberg Party Social Democrats Moderate Liberals Last election 166 86 21 Seats won 159 76 51 Seat change 7 10 30 Popular vote 2,487,551 1,187,335 792,268 Percentage 44.68% 21.33% 14.23% Swing 0.93 pp 2.31 pp 8.33 pp   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   Leader Thorbjörn Fälldin Lars Werner Alf Svensson Party Centre Left-Communist Christian Democrats Last election 56 20 0 Seats won 43 19 1 Seat change 13 1 1 Popular vote 490,999 298,419 131,548 Percentage 8.82% 5.36% 2.36% Swing 6.46 pp 0.20 pp 0.49 pp
Map of the election, showing the distribution of constituency and levelling seats, as well as the largest political bloc within each constituency.
PM before election Olof Palme Social Democrats Elected PM Olof Palme Social Democrats

General elections were held in

At a campaign meeting in Sundsvall on 22 August, Minister of Social Welfare Sten Andersson promised to increase the state pensions as a compensation for the price increases following the devaluation of the krona in 1982. The Social Democrat (Socialdemokraterna) government also stressed that it had managed to decrease the budget deficit from 90 billion to 60 billion kronas. The Social Democrats also promised not to increase taxes or lower the quality of the welfare system.

The

The Centre Party and Christian Democratic Unity (CDU) ran a joint list in some constituencies under the name "Centre".^[6] One CDU candidate was elected on the Centre list, the first time the party had had parliamentary representation.^[2]

Party		Votes	%	Seats	+/–
	Swedish Social Democratic Party	2,487,551	44.68	159	–7
	Moderate Party	1,187,335	21.33	76	–10
	People's Party	792,268	14.23	51	+30
	Centre Party	490,999	8.82	43	–13
	Left Party Communists	298,419	5.36	19	–1
	Christian Democratic Unity	131,548	2.36	0	0
	Green Party	83,645	1.50	0	0
	Centre (CDU–C)	73,711	1.32	1	–
	Other parties	21,546	0.39	0	0
Total		5,567,022	100.00	349	0
Valid votes		5,567,022	99.14
Invalid/blank votes		48,220	0.86
Total votes		5,615,242	100.00
Registered voters/turnout		6,249,445	89.85
Source: Nohlen & Stöver

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  Votes by municipality. The municipalities are the color of the party that got the most votes within the coalition that won relative majority.
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  Cartogram of the map to the left with each municipality rescaled to the number of valid votes cast.
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  Map showing the voting shifts from the 1982 to the 1985 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.
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  Votes by municipality as a scale from red/Left-wing bloc to blue/Centre-right bloc.
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  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.