[3] The election was notable due to the rise of a new right-wing populist party named New Democracy which succeeded in securing a parliamentary mandate for the first (and only) time.

One large factor in the shift between the blocs was that the Christian Democrats managed to reach the 4% threshold by a good margin after many previous attempts.

This combined with the Green Party falling short of the threshold, meant vast changes to areas yielding wins for the blue bloc.

Norrköping, Västerås and Örebro, main urban areas inside the left-wing industrial belt of central Sweden, all voted blue for the first time for generations.

Led by the strong Moderate vote, Malmö also flipped to a blue plurality, overturning another historical Social Democrat stronghold.