Sweden 1998 general election

Final results from ParlGov, read 5 October 2026: Swedish Social Democratic Party won 131 of 349 seats with 36.4% of the vote; 81.4% of registered voters cast a ballot, down 5.4 points on 1994.

Sweden
Held Sunday 20 September 1998

Result

175 for a majority

Seats and votes by party

Party	Seats	± seats	%	± points	Votes
Swedish Social Democratic Party	131	−30	36.4	−8.9	1,914,426
Moderate Party	82	+2	22.9	+0.5	1,204,926
Left Party	43	+21	12.0	+5.8	631,011
Christian Democrats	42	+27	11.8	+7.7	619,046
Centre Party	18	−9	5.1	−2.6	269,762
Liberals	17	−9	4.7	−2.5	248,076
Green Party	16	−2	4.5	−0.5	236,699
Swedish Senior Citizen Interest Party	0		1.0		52,869

± is the change against the Sweden 1994 general election, party by party.

Votes by party

Swedish Social Democratic Party 1,914,426
Moderate Party 1,204,926
Left Party 631,011
Christian Democrats 619,046
Centre Party 269,762
Liberals 248,076
Green Party 236,699
Swedish Senior Citizen Interest Party 52,869

ParlGov lists parties with at least 1 percent of the vote or 2 seats, so the rows do not add up to the valid votes. How we read it.

Share of the vote

Swedish Social Democratic Party36.4%
Moderate Party22.9%
Left Party12.0%
Christian Democrats11.8%
Centre Party5.1%
Liberals4.7%
Green Party4.5%
Swedish Senior Citizen Interest Party1.0%

Turnout

81.4% of the 6,603,129 registered voters cast a ballot (5,374,588 ballots), down 5.4 points on 1994. 5,261,122 of them were valid votes. The lowest turnout since 1958 in our data. How turnout is counted.

Votes and seats

Swedish Social Democratic Party36.4% of votes37.5% of seats
Moderate Party22.9% of votes23.5% of seats
Left Party12.0% of votes12.3% of seats
Christian Democrats11.8% of votes12.0% of seats
Centre Party5.1% of votes5.2% of seats
Liberals4.7% of votes4.9% of seats
Green Party4.5% of votes4.6% of seats

Each party's share of the vote (outlined) and of the seats (filled)

The Gallagher index of disproportionality is 1.2 (0 when seats follow votes exactly); the effective number of parties is 4.5 by votes and 4.3 by seats; Swedish Social Democratic Party led Moderate Party by 13.5 points of the vote. How these are computed.

Sources and licence

ParlGov 2024 Release (Döring and Manow), Harvard Dataverse (source). Licence: CC0 1.0 Universal
Wikidata, party colours (P465) (source). Licence: CC0 1.0 Universal

Our text and compilation: CC BY 4.0. How to reuse and cite this page.