Do Sweden's Liberals keep any seats in parliament on September 13?
With the Liberals polling below 4%, we break down why their parliamentary survival looks unlikely ahead of the September 13 elections
Sweden elects a new parliament on September 13, 2026, just nine days away. Polymarket has been running a contract since August on whether the Liberals, a small center-right party that has sat in parliament for decades, will win any seats. 'Yes' trades at 37.5 cents and 'No' at 62.5 cents.
The contract pays 'Yes' holders if the Swedish Election Authority, which counts votes and allocates seats, awards the Liberals at least one seat. Under Sweden's rules, a party normally wins seats only by clearing a 4% national threshold. A party at 4% takes about 15 of the 349 seats, while a party just below that wins none. The Liberals took 4.61% and 16 seats in 2022, so the question is whether they can again reach 4%.
There is one exception to the 4% rule, though. A party below the national threshold still wins seats by taking 12% in any one of Sweden's 29 voting districts. That would require the Liberals to poll four to six times their national support in a single district, and no party has entered parliament that way in the modern era.
Across six polling firms in August, the Liberals averaged 2.6%. Two weighted averages sit even lower, at 2.1 and 2.3%. Even taking the friendliest of those figures, the party still needs 1.4 percentage points in nine days. Morgontidningen, a Swedish news site, has measured the Liberals' late-campaign gains in eight past contests. Only once did that gain reach 0.7 points.
Swedish polls have also overstated the Liberals in recent cycles, by 0.4 points in 2018 and 0.3 points in 2022. If that bias repeats, the true figure behind a 2.6% reading would be below 2.6, widening the gap to 4%.
Novus, a Swedish polling firm, put the Liberals at 3.3% in polling conducted August 24 to 30, up 1.4 points. The Novus poll is the newest in the set and the strongest argument for 'Yes', because the 2.6% average rests partly on older numbers. If Novus is right, the gap shrinks to 0.7 points. But Novus itself notes that the distance to 4% remains wider than its own margin of error, so even this reading leaves the Liberals short.
At 62.5 cents, 'No' returns 60% if the Swedish Election Authority awards the Liberals zero seats, and this is the side we are betting on.
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