1973 Lottery Parliament
The 1973 Riksdag election produced an exact 175–175 seat tie between the socialist and bourgeois blocs. Olof Palme's cabinet remained in office but tied votes were resolved by literally drawing lots — earning the parliament its lotteririksdagen nickname — while most major bills were settled through cross-bloc consensus agreements.
The Riksdag election of 16 September 1973 returned an exact tie: 175 seats for the socialist bloc led by Olof Palme‘s Social Democrats with the Communists, against 175 seats for the combined Centre, Liberal, and Moderate opposition. Palme’s first cabinet remained in power as incumbent but lost any parliamentary majority for new legislation.
When Riksdag votes deadlocked through the 1973–1976 mandate, members drew lots to break ties on individual questions — the practice that gave the parliament its enduring nickname lotteririksdagen. Most consequential bills, however, were resolved through negotiated cross-bloc consensus, producing a temporary regime of compromise politics on top of an otherwise polarising decade. The experience compounded pressure for the constitutional revisions that gave Sweden the odd-numbered single-chamber Riksdag from 1974 onwards.
The lottery parliament set the stage for the 1976 power shift: a single-mandate stalemate signalled that 44 years of unbroken Social Democratic rule was structurally exhausted, and the bourgeois opposition would consolidate just enough to take office three years later under Thorbjörn Fälldin.