Elections to the municipal and county council assemblies are held on the same day as the parliamentary elections. All Swedish citizens who have reached the age of 18 by election day and who are or have been resident in Sweden are entitled to vote in parliamentary elections.
To be eligible to become a member of the Riksdag, candidates must be entitled to vote and be nominated by a political party. Initially, the votes in an election are distributed between the parties.
There are 349 seats in the Riksdag. The Swedish electoral system is designed to distribute the seats as fairly as possible between the parties on the basis of the number of votes each party receives. In principle, all votes are of equal value, but seats are only awarded to parties attaining at least four per cent of the total votes.