STOCKHOLM, Sept. 10 (Xinhua) -- Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven's Social Democrats remained as the biggest party after Sunday's parliamentary elections, preliminary results showed on Monday.
Lofven told the party rally that he also intended to stay on as prime minister.
When votes of 5,984 districts out of 6,004 were counted, Social Democrats had 28.4 percent of all votes, which is a little less compared with the election in 2014 when the party had 31.3 percent support.
According to the Sweden's Television SVT, the prime minister said that the Social Democrats do not have a majority anymore. "Now that the voters have talked, it is up to all decent parties to wait for the final results and to negotiate and cooperate."
With a support of 19.8 percent, Moderates will continue as the second biggest party, leaving the far-right Sweden Democrats at the third place as they managed to gain 17.6 percent of all votes.
The Swedish parliament's center-right and center-left alliances are now neck to neck, both falling short of a majority. This means that if the alliances can not form a coalition, it may take weeks before a new government is set up.
According to political scientist Soren Holmberg, early votes and votes from Swedes living abroad might still affect the results as these votes are yet to be counted. The final results will be known on Wednesday.
