A Swedish centrist government bringing together the Social Democrats, Centre Party and Christian Democrats is becoming the Centre Party’s preferred answer to one of the most difficult questions ahead of the 13 September election: how to form a government without relying on either the Left Party or the Sweden Democrats?
There is no indication that the Centre Party (Centerpartiet, C) is explicitly trying to reproduce the Danish experience. But its proposal inevitably recalls what happened across the Øresund after Denmark’s 2022 election, when parties traditionally belonging to opposing blocs formed the SVM government, bringing the Social Democrats, Venstre and the Moderates into the same coalition.
The comparison is imperfect, but politically useful. Both ideas start from the same basic assumption: if the traditional blocs cannot produce a stable majority, the political centre can attempt to build one across them.
Centre Party leader Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist is now promoting a government involving the Social Democrats (Socialdemokraterna, S), C and the Christian Democrats (Kristdemokraterna, KD), potentially also including the Green Party (Miljöpartiet, MP). As reported by Sweden Herald, C is placing this “middle option” more prominently in its election campaign as it seeks voters who do not want political influence from either the Left Party (Vänsterpartiet, V) or the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna, SD).
The Danish precedent behind Sweden’s centrist debate
Denmark offers the clearest recent Nordic example of what C is now suggesting in Sweden.
After the 2022 Danish election, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen abandoned the usual bloc logic and formed a government between her Social Democrats (Socialdemokratiet), the centre-right Venstre and former prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen’s Moderates (Moderaterne).
The coalition became known simply as SVM, from the initials of the three parties. According to the Danish Prime Minister’s Office, it governed from 15 December 2022 until 3 June 2026.
Its significance went beyond the parties involved. Frederiksen had campaigned on the possibility of forming a broad government across the traditional divide, arguing that Denmark faced challenges requiring cooperation beyond the established red and blue blocs.
C’s proposal for Sweden follows a recognisably similar logic.
It would place S at the centre of a coalition extending towards the centre-right, while reducing the bargaining power of parties further from the centre. In the Swedish case, those parties would primarily be V on the left and SD on the right.
This does not make S-C-KD a Swedish SVM. The parties, electoral arithmetic and political relationships are different. But Denmark shows that a cross-bloc coalition led by the Social Democrats is no longer merely a theoretical possibility in Nordic politics.
C wants a government between Sweden’s two poles
The Centre Party’s proposal rests on an unusual combination.
S and C have cooperated before, particularly during the previous parliamentary term. KD, however, currently belongs to the governing Tidö bloc and has rejected Thand Ringqvist’s invitation.
C nevertheless believes that positions could change after the election. Thand Ringqvist argues that the party’s centrist alternative, which initially appeared politically unrealistic, is increasingly relevant as the government question becomes more complicated.
The party has also started defining what such cooperation would involve.
Its priorities include employment, climate policy and public services. In August, C made permanent police presence in every Swedish municipality one of its conditions for participating in a possible S-led government.
It also wants Sweden’s fiscal framework to include a growth target of at least 2.5 percent over an economic cycle.
But the defining feature of C’s strategy is less about individual policies than about which parties it wants to keep outside government.
The real obstacle is the Left Party
In January, Thand Ringqvist said explicitly that C would not allow V into a government and would not support a government dependent on SD. She identified S, M, KD, L and MP as parties with which C could potentially cooperate.
This produces one of the main contradictions facing a possible change of government.
V leader Nooshi Dadgostar wants her party to enter government if the current Tidö majority loses the election. C says precisely the opposite: it will not support a government containing V.
The relative strength of C and V could therefore become crucial for Magdalena Andersson. A strong V would push an S-led alternative towards the left. A strong C would give greater weight to the argument for moving towards the centre and seeking cooperation across the traditional blocs.
That is where the Danish comparison becomes particularly relevant.
Frederiksen’s decision in 2022 was not simply to add a centrist party to a conventional centre-left coalition. It was to replace the conventional coalition logic altogether, choosing Venstre over parties to the left of the Social Democrats.
For Andersson, a comparable choice would mean prioritising cooperation with C and some part of Sweden’s current centre-right over a government involving V.
There is no evidence that S has made such a choice. But C is increasingly trying to ensure that the option exists.
Why Sweden would still be different from SVM
There are important reasons why Denmark’s experiment cannot simply be transferred to Sweden.
The Danish SVM coalition included Venstre, historically one of Denmark’s two major governing parties. C’s preferred Swedish combination instead relies on KD, a much smaller party that is currently closely associated with the Tidö cooperation.
KD leader Ebba Busch has so far rejected the proposal.
The Swedish party system also contains a different parliamentary constraint. SD is considerably larger than the Danish People’s Party was when SVM was formed, while V is openly demanding government participation.
A Swedish centrist government would therefore not simply require parties to cross the left-right divide. It would require them to manage the exclusion of relatively large parties on both sides while still assembling sufficient parliamentary support.
The Green Party could potentially be added to C’s proposed coalition, but this would not automatically resolve that arithmetic.
The election could produce a Danish question for Sweden
Swedes will elect a new Riksdag on 13 September 2026, according to the Swedish Election Authority (Valmyndigheten).
Much of the campaign is still presented as a competition between the Tidö parties and the opposition. Government formation could prove considerably less binary.
On the right, Ulf Kristersson’s government depends on cooperation with SD. On the other side, the parties that could support Andersson disagree over who should enter government and what political direction it should take.
The Centre Party is trying to turn that uncertainty into an electoral proposition of its own: replace the Tidö government, but do so from the centre rather than from the left.
This is where Sweden may eventually face a question similar to the one Denmark faced in 2022. Should the largest centre-left party try to rebuild its traditional bloc, or cross the political divide to create a broader government around the centre?
Denmark answered that question with SVM.
Sweden is not there yet, and the conditions are substantially different. But by proposing an S-C-KD government, the Centre Party is making sure that a Swedish version of the same political dilemma will already be on the table when voters go to the polls.
