Sweden voted, and the difference is one seat in a parliament of 349. The centre-left bloc backing Magdalena Andersson for prime minister leads by the narrowest of margins over the right-wing bloc of incumbent Ulf Kristersson. Votes are still being counted, and the electoral authority confirms the final result around a week after polling day.

Exit polls had suggested a more convincing lead for the left. Swedish exit polls are generally not especially accurate - in 2022 they predicted Andersson's bloc would dominate, and in the end the right under Kristersson won. Whoever is celebrating tonight should keep that in mind.

A referendum nobody announced as one

A win for the right would mean the Sweden Democrats - a party with neo-Nazi roots, polling 17.2 percent - entering government for the first time rather than merely supporting it from outside. That is why many see this election as a referendum on precisely that party. The question was whether a country of 10.6 million keeps moving right, or returns to the liberalism that was its calling card for decades.

The answer, as it stands for now, is: neither. Half and half, with one seat between them.

When a narrow result is the message in itself

Sweden is the country that for years was western Europe's model of stability and consensus. Today its parliament is split into two blocs separated by less than a counting error. That is not a Swedish phenomenon - it is the current state of much of Europe, where two camps have roughly the same number of voters and neither has enough to govern without pain.

The Balkans know this scene up close: a government assembled out of fragments, coalitions that take longer to negotiate than they last, and a new election night arriving sooner than anyone planned. The difference is that there the campaign is over while the counters are still working. Would a one-seat margin be waited out that calmly here?