The ruling party clings to a gain on the far right: NPR

Updated at 23:30 ET

A preliminary count of the parliamentary elections in Sweden on Sunday shows a populist and anti-immigrant party winning in parliament at the expense of the ruling center-left coalition.

If the results are conclusive, the Swedish Democrats, a nationalist party with neo-Nazi roots, will become the third largest party in parliament, defeating the ruling Social Democrats.

With 84.4% of the votes counted, the Swedish Democrats got 17.6% of the votes against 28.4% for the Social Democrats, according to the Swedish public broadcaster SVT. After a first exit poll of SVT showing Swedish Democrats with the second largest number of votes, the moderate center-right party overtook the nationalist group, with 19.8% of voters' support.

In an interview with Michel Martin of NPR, journalist Maddy Savage says that among the eight parties that came to parliament, there is historically "a sense of left or a sense of the right-wing bloc capable of forming a coalition".

But, as Savage notes, this is not the case this year, in an unpredictable election where much of the vote depends on voter attitudes to the issue of immigration.

Sweden, known for its open-door immigration policy, has long been a destination for refugees. After the country, which counted 10 million inhabitants, hosted in 2015 a record number of 163,000 migrants, some Swedes have rethought its immigration policies. Eleanor Beardsley of the NPR reported that Sweden passed a law in 2016 requiring all municipalities to pay for its share of migrants.

Swedish Democrats, led by Jimmie Akesson, link the country's rising crime rate to immigration, but official figures show no correlation. As independent journalist Sidsel Overgaard reported in the weekend edition of the NPR, Saturday: "Sweden does not track the ethnicity of perpetrators, so establish a link between immigration and crime is a largely speculative exercise ".

Akesson told his supporters on Sunday that the 63 seats planned by his party in the 349-seat parliament would be a victory. "Nobody can take that away from us," he said, according to The Guardian.

The newspaper adds:

"He said that he was interested in cooperating with the other parties and especially wanted to tell the moderates" how to govern the country … We are strengthening our role as king. We are going to have a huge influence on what is happening in Sweden in the weeks, months, years to come. "

For their part, the two big blocs are strongly opposed to the normalization of relations with the party of the far right. Instead, the moderate leader, Ulf Kristersson, told his supporters Sunday night that an alliance of four opposition parties "is clearly the most important," reports the Washington Post, and that the Social Democrat Prime Minister Stefan.

In response, Lofven stated that he planned to stay in his position, the To post reports. The prime minister said that "the results are still not clear," but that traditional parties now have a "moral responsibility" to form the next government.

Swedish anti-immigrant Democrats have nothing to offer except "hatred," Lofven said.