18 September 1994 1998 → 80 31 80 27 Start date September 18, 1994 | 138 80 161 80 23 0 | |
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Winner Ingvar Carlsson | ||
General elections were held in Sweden on 18 September 1994. The Swedish Social Democratic Party remained the largest party in the Riksdag, winning 161 of the 349 seats. Led by Ingvar Carlsson, the party returned to power and formed a minority government after the election. The Greens also returned to the Riksdag after a three-year absence.
The Moderates slightly improved on their 1991 performance, but the Centre Party, the Liberals and the Christian Democrats all fared poorly, the latter barely holding on to their parliamentary representation. New Democracy, a populist political party which had entered the Riksdag three years earlier, performed poorly, losing most of its voters and all of its seats in the Riksdag. In total the party's vote share dropped from 6.7% in 1991 to 1.2% in 1994. The election introduced an extended electoral cycle of four years, replacing the previous three-year terms.
It was also notable for being the first electoral event in the world whose official results were published live on the nascent World Wide Web (other countries had previously used the then-fledging Internet to officially broadcast election results, but with simpler methods such as e-mail lists).