Reinfeldt reached out to working-class votes in the re-branding as the 'New Moderates', which resulted in sizeable gains in historically left-wing locations in densely populated areas.

[1] This, combined with a landslide overall win in the capital region as a whole and strong showings in Scania tipped the balance in favour of the Alliance.

[1] This was the final election before the Sweden Democrats entered the Riksdag, with the party getting close to three percent of the vote, falling short by just above one percentage point.

The meeting ended on 31 August 2004 with the presentation of a joint declaration outlining the principles under which the four parties intended to run in the election.

However the gap between the two blocs (s, v, and mp are assumed to work together) began to close rapidly in January 2006, and the red-green parties took the lead in May 2006; indeed they were ahead of the Alliance in every poll conducted in May and June.

The Social Democrat government's perceived failure to reduce unemployment was a major issue in the campaign, especially considering the good performance of the Swedish economy (when compared with that of the rest of Europe).

[6] This gloomy view of the unemployment situation was raised by Jan Edling, a former economist for the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO).

However, compared with other OECD countries Sweden has a low "broad unemployment", as was pointed out by the Green Party's Peter Eriksson in the debate.

[8] Critics of the proposed tax cuts said that, because they are funded by reducing unemployment benefit and sick pay, they would attack the most needy in society rather than helping them as Alliance for Sweden claimed.

A similar contract introduced by the French government (the Contrat première embauche) caused angry demonstrations and riots in France.

It does however give a new opportunity for the 146,000 youths who are wholly or partially living in the exclusion the Social Democrats have created... One of the main reasons why companies don't take on new staff is that the risk is too large.

By lowering the threshold for job creation we are convinced that many youths will be able to take their first steps onto a labour market that they today have never been able to set foot on.

[14][15] On 4 September 2006, only two weeks before the general election, the Social Democratic Party reported to the police a computer break-in into its internal network.

It has been reported that members of the Liberal People's Party copied secret information, not yet officially released, on at least two occasions for the purpose of counter-attacking Social Democratic political propositions.

The Speaker had asked Reinfeldt to begin this formation on 19 September but, as is usual, requested the Cabinet of Göran Persson to stay on as a caretaker government until the Riksdag formally elected a new prime minister.