The trend continues. Many Swedes decide late which party they will vote for. 32 percent made the decision on election day or in the last week before election day.
But for the Liberals, the figure was 63 percent.
The hypothesis is that there were even more votes of support for the Liberals this time than there were in 2022, and there were already a lot then, says Henrik Ekengren Oscarsson, professor of political science at the University of Gothenburg.
Together with other researchers and political scientists, he is behind SVT's polling station survey, which in this year's election includes 13,709 questionnaires, the largest database to date.
L voters deserted the party
Another indication of the many votes of support for the Liberals is that only 36 percent of L voters from 2022 remained for this year's election, according to the polling station survey.
Of the Liberals' voters this year, a full 42 percent voted for the Moderates in 2022. Nine percent of those who voted for L this year voted for SD four years ago. Nine percent came from the Christian Democrats.
The party leader as a driving force is also an important issue. 22 percent responded that Liberal leader Simona Mohamsson was very important for choosing a party.
That's a low figure. Compare that to Jimmie Åkesson's well over 50 percent, says Ekengren Oscarsson.
Magdalena Andersson is also not the same vote magnet she was in the 2022 election, but she has fallen from 36 percent to 25 percent.
She was a bit of a drag in 2022, but not in the same way this time, says Sören Holmberg, professor emeritus of political science.
However, the Christian Democrats' Ebba Busch has made the opposite journey and climbed from 28 percent to 37 in importance. Moderate leader Ulf Kristersson is stable at 23 percent.
“A key-leaked party”
Although the Liberals have a strong profile issue in schools, which many voters rank as their most important issue, the polling station survey shows that L has gained voters with a completely different ideological profile now, according to political scientists.
The Liberals made the final sprint with the campaign "Without us, the reds will go to hell" and the four percent threshold was probably the deciding factor, they believe.
"The Liberals are a completely new party. They have lost a lot of social liberal voters. They have defected to the Centre Party and the Social Democrats, especially," says Ekengren Oscarsson.
Corrected: In a previous version, there were incorrect percentages for how many of the Liberals' voters voted for other parties in 2022.
