Portugal

Lisbon, September 15, 2026. The Portuguese press followed the Swedish election evening on Sunday, September 13, 2026, as a historic shift: according to the first projections of the public television SVT, broadcast at 8:00 p.m. (7:00 p.m. in Lisbon), the time of the closing of the polling stations, the opposition — "mostly left-wing, but also including the Centre Party" — would obtain 51.3% of the vote against 46.8% for the right-wing bloc. Enough, writes the Jornal Económico, to make Magdalena Andersson "the first woman elected prime minister" of Sweden, after four years in opposition.

The striking fact for Portuguese editorial offices is, however, not so much the alternation as the fall of the Sweden Democrats. Founded in 1980, the nationalist party had obtained its best result in 2022, with 20.5% of the vote, becoming the first right-wing force in Parliament. According to SVT projections, it falls back to 17.2%, ceding its second place. SAPO Notícias mentions a "disappointment" for this radical right, contrasting with the "jubilation" of the social democrats gathered in a hotel in the center of Stockholm, where the Greens, credited with 7.4% of the vote, also celebrated a possible coalition partnership.

At the beginning of the election evening, Magdalena Andersson reaffirmed her openness "to collaboration with all parties, except the Sweden Democrats". She summarized her program: "to restart the economy, so that ordinary people have more money in their pockets, and that the crisis in education and health comes to an end."

It is the Jornal Económico that delves the most into the security and migration angle: the vote, the newspaper recalls, came a week after the victory of the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt, and it quoted John Stauffer, legal director of Civil Rights Defenders, who said that the four years of Kristersson-Sweden Democrats government have produced "enormous changes in crime and immigration policies", to the point of threatening Sweden's reputation as a defender of human rights. This electoral setback for the far right, for the Portuguese press, is read first and foremost as a disavowal of this shift, rather than as a simple arithmetic calculation of seats in the Riksdag, where each party must cross the 4% threshold to enter Parliament.