The Swedish parliament has re-elected Magdalena Andersson as Prime Minister. Only the previous week, she had resigned hours after her first election when her ruling coalition collapsed.

The Social Democrat Magdalena Andersson has been elected Prime Minister of Sweden for the second time within a few days. As with a first vote last Wednesday, Andersson received the necessary support from parliament in Stockholm.

101 MPs voted for the Social Democrat, 75 abstained, and 173 voted against her. In order to become prime minister, she could not be rejected by an absolute majority in parliament.

Last Wednesday, Andersson resigned just hours after the vote in a budget dispute. She had previously won the support of the Left Party for her planned coalition government – and promised a pension increase in return. However, because of the concessions to the left, the small Center Party withdrew its support for Andersson’s budget. This then failed in parliament.

Instead, the MPs voted for the opposition’s budget – consisting of the Conservative Moderates, the Christian Democrats and the far-right Sweden Democrats. Andersson indicated that she wanted to govern with the opposition’s budget, too – after which the Greens left the government.

Andersson is the first female prime minister of the Scandinavian country. The 54-year-old former finance minister had already taken over the leadership of the Social Democrats at the beginning of November after the former party and government leader Stefan Löfven resigned. With the move, he sought to offer his party better opportunities since his approval ratings were decreasing.

Image by Socialdemokraterna (Flickr)/Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)