Sweden's centre-left opposition bloc has won Sunday's general election, according to a projection by SVT, Sweden's public broadcaster, bringing an end to a tense and closely fought race between the left and right. With 99 percent of votes counted, the opposition parties led by Social Democratic leader Magdalena Andersson are on course to secure 175 seats in the Riksdag, Sweden's 349-seat parliament — the minimum required to form a government. The outgoing right-wing governing bloc, led by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, appears to have fallen just short, projected to win 174 seats.

The margin of victory was strikingly narrow. At one point during the count, the gap between the two blocs stood at just 26,169 votes. Sweden's electoral authority is still tallying late-arriving ballots from both inside the country and abroad, with a full final count expected by Thursday. SVT stated that "the chance of a reversal at this stage is so small that we can say with certainty that the opposition will obtain the most seats."

The stakes were particularly high for the centre-left bloc. Kristersson's centre-right minority government had been governing with the parliamentary support of the Sweden Democrats, a radical-right party. He had pledged to bring the Sweden Democrats into a formal governing role if the right-wing bloc prevailed — a prospect that galvanised centre-left voters and made the election one of the most consequential in recent Swedish political history.

Andersson, who previously served as Sweden's first female prime minister before losing power, now appears positioned to return to government. Her Social Democratic Labour Party is the anchor of the winning bloc, which also includes smaller left-leaning parties. The result marks a significant shift in Swedish politics after years of right-wing governance supported by nationalist forces, though the extraordinary thinness of the margin means the new government will face immediate challenges in building a stable parliamentary majority.