Voter turnout in Sweden rose sharply in several districts where relatively few people had voted in previous elections, including a number of areas classified by police as socially vulnerable. In northern Ronna, in Södertälje, turnout increased by 15.6 percentage points, from just under 40% in 2022 to more than 55% in this year’s election, according to SVT.
Similar increases were recorded in several other low-turnout districts around the country. The figures do not yet prove that Sweden is seeing a lasting national trend, but they show a significant change in places where electoral participation had previously been particularly low.
Voter turnout rose by almost 16 points in Ronna
The clearest example comes from Ronna norra, an electoral district in Södertälje, south-west of Stockholm.
Turnout there rose by 15.6 percentage points, from just under 40% in the previous election to more than 55%. SVT reported long queues outside polling stations in an area that had previously recorded one of the lowest turnout levels in Sweden.
Ahead of the election, Södertälje municipality introduced several measures intended to make voting easier. Municipal officials visited local neighbourhoods to provide information about the election and explain how to vote. For the first time, Ronna also had an early-voting location.
Polling stations were also brought together in the same place to make them easier for residents to find and access.
Jessika Karreskog, head of investigation and sustainability at Södertälje municipality, told SVT that the municipality had worked actively in these areas to increase participation.
It is not yet possible to establish whether those initiatives directly caused the increase. Södertälje municipality is now expected to evaluate its work to understand what may have contributed to the higher turnout.
The same pattern appeared in several other low-turnout districts
Ronna was not an isolated case.
According to SVT’s comparison of electoral districts, turnout rose by 14.8 percentage points in Vårby gård västra and by 11.6 points in Rinkebysvängen östra.
Other significant increases included:
- Albyberget/Tingsstorget: +6.5 percentage points
- Kronogården norra in Trollhättan: +7.3 points
- Gamlegården in Kristianstad: close to +10 points
Several of these districts were among the places with Sweden’s lowest voter participation in 2022.
A number are also located in areas classified by the Swedish Police Authority (Polismyndigheten) as utsatta områden, or “vulnerable areas”.
The police define an utsatt område as a geographically defined area characterised by low socioeconomic status and significant criminal influence on the local community. It is a specific policing classification rather than a general term for low-income or immigrant neighbourhoods.
Local efforts may have made voting easier
The increase in Södertälje raises the question of whether practical measures can help reduce persistent differences in electoral participation.
Providing voting information locally, opening early-voting facilities closer to residents and making polling stations easier to access can remove some of the practical barriers associated with voting.
Södertälje’s experience is particularly relevant because several of these measures were introduced specifically in areas where turnout had historically been low.
For now, however, the municipality itself is cautious about attributing the change to any single intervention. The 2026 election also involved intense political campaigning in several of these districts, meaning stronger party mobilisation may have contributed as well.
The Social Democrats and Left Party also gained in several areas
The higher turnout coincided with another electoral pattern.
In several of the districts highlighted by SVT, the Social Democratic Party (Socialdemokraterna) and the Left Party (Vänsterpartiet) already had relatively strong support and gained further ground in this election.
In Ronna norra, both parties increased their vote share. The Left Party has pointed to more intensive campaigning as one possible factor.
Linda Sjögren, the Left Party’s group leader in Södertälje, told SVT that the party had conducted door-to-door campaigning in the area for the first time.
A separate SVT analysis found that the Left Party gained support in several vulnerable or particularly vulnerable areas where turnout also increased.
Political scientist Jenny Madestam pointed both to the party’s active campaigning in those neighbourhoods and to the possibility that its political programme appealed to voters there.
In Hovsjö norra, for example, preliminary figures showed the Social Democratic Party increasing by 12.9 percentage points. The Left Party rose by 10.2 points in Hovsjö södra and by 13.7 points in Brunnsäng västra.
These local results do not demonstrate that higher turnout automatically benefits the left. They do show that, in several of the districts where participation increased most, greater mobilisation coincided with gains for the Social Democrats and the Left Party.
Sweden’s turnout gap remains an important democratic issue
Sweden generally records high participation in national elections, but turnout differs substantially between individual electoral districts.
That gap matters because persistently lower participation means residents of some neighbourhoods use their formal political influence less frequently than voters elsewhere.
The latest figures are therefore notable not because turnout in these districts has become exceptionally high. In Ronna norra, participation remains well below the national level. What has changed is the size of the gap.
The increases recorded in Södertälje, Stockholm, Trollhättan and Kristianstad suggest that very low turnout is not necessarily fixed.
The next question is whether the shift will survive beyond a single election. Södertälje’s evaluation could offer some indication of whether easier access to voting and targeted local information played a meaningful role, or whether the 2026 increases were mainly the result of an unusually intense political mobilisation.
