The Sweden Democrats fell back in the EU parliamentary election – and went from being the third to the fourth largest party.
Party leader Jimmie Åkesson is surprised over the election result.
Most analysts had counted on us increasing, all measurements showed it. It was an unexpected event, he says in SVT's Aktuellt.
Åkesson believes that the Sweden Democrats failed to mobilise their voters, and states that the party will now conduct a post-election analysis. The party fell back by over two percentage points compared to the previous EU election in 2019.
It doesn't seem like we've lost voters to the parties we normally lose voters to, primarily The Moderate Party and the Christian Democrats.
This year's election campaign is the first since the party joined the Tidö Agreement, and thereby initiated cooperation with the government parties. Whether this has affected the election result, Åkesson has no clear opinion about.
It's clear that I must be self-critical when we do a bad election. But which part was bad is too early to answer.
We're now entering a completely different phase, with a focus on policy issues. When we get to talk about policy issues, as in the 2022 election, it goes very well for us.
