On Wednesday, the municipal election boards will count the early votes and votes cast abroad that did not make it to the polling stations on election night. A large number of early votes arrived late, and votes cast abroad increased in this year's election. The number of votes in the preliminary count is therefore expected to be larger than before.
What we are saying now is an estimate - we don't know where it will end up - but we estimate that it will be close to 300,000 votes in this year's election. There has been an increase and now it is increasing even more, says Anna Nyqvist, head of the secretariat at the Swedish Election Authority.
This means that the count will likely take a long time for many municipalities and is not expected to be fully completed until Thursday, according to the Election Authority.
“Want to be open”
Anna Nyqvist does not want to describe it as a delay in the count, but rather sees it as "consumer information for voters".
We want to be open and clear about when we assess that we can expect a result, she says, adding:
The Election Act states that the votes in the preliminary count should be counted on the Wednesday or Thursday after the election. It is the case in every election that if there are many such votes, there is a possibility that it will carry over to Thursday.
Final count may be affected
When the election committees have finished counting, the votes will be handed over to the county administrative boards for the final count. As a result of the preliminary vote count not being completed until Thursday, the final count may also take some time.
"There could absolutely be that risk. If there are many votes from this count, the county administrative board has to count them, they can't be finished before they have received these votes," says Anna Nyqvist.
After preliminary results from the 6,312 districts counted on election night were reported, the opposition parties have an advantage with 176 seats compared to the Tidö parties' 173 seats.
A total of 314 polling districts will be counted on Wednesday and Thursday.
