How does the Alliance motivate their claim to have a mandate (Swedish parliamentary elections, 2018)?

Question

The Swedish parliamentary elections, 2018 has resulted in a deadlock:

• The centre-left Red-Green block, outgoing minority government, has 144 seats (was: 159).
• The centre-right Alliance block, outgoing opposition, has 143 seats (was: 141).
• The populist far right Sweden Democrats party has 62 seats (was: 49).

The Alliance and Red-Green both claim to refuse any formal or informal cooperation with the Sweden Democrats.

The Alliance parties are claiming that the Red-Green government has lost its mandate, that the prime minister must resign, and that they want to form the next government.

With less votes than the outgoing minority government and a refusal to cooperate with the Sweden Democrats, based on what situation does The Alliance claim that they can seek a mandate to form a government?

Answer 1

A "mandate" is generally not officially defined, and not in Sweden either as far as I can tell. That is why parties can claim it without being directly refuted - a mandate is simply a subjective term. An approximate interpretation is a "large number of voters, sufficient to rule".

This is contextually different from "majority", which is typically well-defined by electoral law. And since that term is well-defined, the use of "mandate" here means specifically "not a majority". The Red-Green block did not have a majority, the Alliance does not have a majority.

Going back to the "mandate", we see that the approximate interpretation worked: the Red-Green block was able to rule, so by that standard they did hold a mandate. And the Alliance now claims they have a mandate, because they want to rule. But it's a subjective term. The Red-Green Block, being the largest, can make the same claim that they have the mandate.

It's clear that both sides indeed have a large number of votes - they're both significantly bigger than the SD (more than double). But the difference between the two is negligible. So a reasonable objective observation may well be that neither party has a mandate. There's no fundamental reason why a multi-party system should end up with a clear winner.

It's up to each country to decide how this is resolved. New elections are a realistic option.