Stockholm, Sep 12 (IANS): Preliminary results of the 2022 Swedish parliamentary elections issued on Monday showed that the opposition blue bloc gained 49.7 per cent of votes, narrowly heading in the race.

The blue bloc comprises the Moderate Party, the Christian Democrats, the Liberal Party and the Sweden Democrats, reports Xinhua news agency.

The red bloc of the Social Democratic Party, the Left Party, the Green Party, and the Centre Party gained 48.8 per cent of the votes cast in Sunday's polling.

The top three biggest parties are the Social Democratic Party, the Sweden Democrats and the Moderate Party, with 30.5, 20.7 and 19 per cent respectively.

With 92 per cent of the votes counted, the blue bloc had gathered 176 parliamentary seats against 173 for the red bloc, putting the election results on a knife edge.

There are 349 seats in the Swedish Parliament and votes cast outside of the country would be counted later this week.

"As far as the government issue is concerned, there is a long way to go before any conclusions can be drawn," Swedish Television's political commentator Mats Knutson was quoted as saying.

Preliminary statistics also showed that 81.3 per cent of the electorate participated in the current parliamentary elections, about 5 per cent less than the last elections in 2018.

The energy crisis, immigration and social security are the three major issues Sweden's 7.77 million statutory voters were most concerned about in this election.