By Johan Ahlander
STOCKHOLM, Sept 17 (Reuters) - When the far-right anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats won a record one-fifth of the vote in a 2022 election, Viking rock player and party leader Jimmie Akesson led supporters in an impromptu celebratory conga.
On Sunday, the dance floor was largely empty.
Instead, party veterans at their hotel HQ near Stockholm's city centre sombrely absorbed something they had never seen before: a decline in support at a parliamentary vote.
"We knew there was always a chance
that we would be punished after these four years of (government) cooperation, but I didn't think the drop would be this big," party veteran Richard Jomshof, 57, who has just written a book on Islam called "Kafir" or infidel in Arabic, told Reuters as a DJ pumped music in vain.
The usually buoyant Akesson departed quietly after a six-minute speech to supporters without talking to reporters, having seen his party shed about 3 percentage points, more than any other party.
The SD's vote fall was the decisive factor in giving the centre-left opposition a projected tight victory – by about 42,500 votes and two seats - over the right-wing governing bloc of Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.
Akesson, 47, joined the party in 1995 and spent two decades leading the SD from irrelevance and occasional notoriety into the mainstream, after it had received a mere 0.25% of votes in a parliamentary election the year before.
But in the latest vote in the Nordic nation of nearly 11 million people, their toughest policies appear to have cost them, especially in increasingly multicultural cities where turnout rose and the centre-left advanced.
SD leaders acknowledged policies such as a proposed ban on Islamic headscarves may have driven opponents to the polls.
TURNOUT SHIFTED RACE
That leaves Sweden swimming against a European tide of right-wing gains even after the SD had successfully pulled Swedish politics sharply to the right on migration.
A breakdown by AI analysis firm Vera Policy for Reuters showed that in the 786 districts where at least 50% of inhabitants were either born abroad or their parents were both born abroad, the centre-left picked up 73,000 more votes than in the previous election - a sizable swing in such a tight race.
"This election has in part been about voter mobilisation, which is unusual in Sweden," said Vera Policy founder Gustav Karreskog Rehbinder.
Turnout rose about 3 percentage points to 67.5% in these almost exclusively urban districts.
An exit poll also showed 67% of voters with a non-European background — around 13% of eligible voters — cast their vote for the centre-left.
"The Sweden Democrats have been very successful in driving a tougher migration policy," said Jenny Madestam, political scientist at Sodertorn University.
"But when you get to the next stage, the assimilation policy that SD wants to roll out, I think many immigrant groups have grown concerned."
PAYING PRICE OF POWER
With full preliminary results due on Thursday, the Sweden Democrats looked set to decline in 285 of Sweden's 290 municipalities compared to the last election, according to the Election Authority.
"We have held a certain position as an outsider, and that has served to mobilize voters who are critical of the system," said Joakim Larsson, SD chairman in Tierp, a small working-class municipality north of Stockholm.
"But if we instead choose a path where we're just a slightly better version of (Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson's) the Moderate Party, then I don't think we'll attract those system-critical voters."
The party apologised last year for past neo-Nazi links and antisemitism, part of efforts to present a more moderate image while remaining the loudest voice on immigration.
Party Secretary Mattias Backstrom Johansson said parties in power were often punished by voters but added that the proposed ban on traditional Islamic headscarves for women and grants to repatriate immigrants might have galvanized opponents.
"It's a problem for democracy when one alternative gets 97% in certain areas," he told Reuters, saying there had been scaremongering by opponents in some urban areas.
One such area was Rinkeby, a small suburb in northern Stockholm that is home to a large Swedish-Somalian population. Here around 94% voted for the centre-left and turnout rose around 10 percentage points compared to the last election.
Aisha Hassan Abdi, 37, daughter of Somali immigrants and with her hair covered in a hijab, said she supported the centre-left and that the proposed ban on headscarves had upset her.
"They claim this is a free country, yet they interfere in other people's cultures and choices," she told Reuters at the main square of the suburb where Akesson had cast his vote complaining it did not look like Sweden.
"It is a deeply personal issue for me."
(Reporting by Johan Ahlander; writing by Niklas Pollard; editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
