# Nuance Party

The Nuance Party (Swedish: Partiet Nyans) is an Islamist and Muslim minority rights party in Sweden, founded in 2019. The party has been criticized due to defending former ISIS members.

## History

The Nuance Party was founded in August 2019 by Mikail Yüksel, a Turkish-born politician expelled from the Centre Party for alleged links to the Turkish ultranationalist group the Grey Wolves. In his founding statement, he said that Islamophobia should be a criminal offence and that Sweden's Muslims should have a constitutional definition as a minority. The party was officially launched in September 2019 and registered with Sweden's Election Authority on 31 October 2019 to contest the 2022 Swedish general election, as well as the 2024 European Parliament election in Sweden.
Dagens Nyheter, Sweden's newspaper of record, reported in July 2022 that one in every seven of the party's electoral candidates was a convicted criminal. In 2024 a politician of the party, Hamza Akacha, was convicted for possession of child pornography.
In August 2022, Scania newspapers Helsingborgs Dagblad and Sydsvenskan found that five of Nuance's 25 candidates in the county had spread hate speech about Jews and Shia Muslims, COVID-19 misinformation, or 9/11 conspiracy theories. Three of the candidates were expelled due to the findings.

## Platform

The Nuance Party accuses Swedish social services of forcing Muslim children into foster care and assimilation. These accusations have been picked up by foreign broadcasters including TRT World and Al Jazeera and rejected as false in Sweden. The party supports criminalizing Quran desecration, such as the public burnings by activist Rasmus Paludan that preceded the 2022 Sweden riots that April.
The party put up a billboard in Kulu, Konya, the place of origin of most of Sweden's Turks, including Yüksel. The billboard described it as "the only Turkey-friendly party that distances itself from terrorist organisations". Sofie Blombäck, a political scientist from Mid Sweden University, said that the party was unusual in that religious-based parties are rare in Sweden; the Christian Democrats is a party smaller than in other nations. Blombäck compared the Nuance Party to DENK, a minority-focused party in the Netherlands, and said that while it could enter local politics in Malmö, it was unlikely to join the Riksdag.

### Party goals

The most important goals according to the party website is:
* Abolish employment fees for new immigrants and people under the age of 25
* Anonymous application for rental homes
* Compulsory Swedish-language education for new immigrants
* Criminalize Bosnian genocide denial
* Fight racism and especially Islamophobia
* Criminalize Quran desecration
* Legalize hijab in all public sectors, removing veil bans.
* Race-based affirmative action in both public and private job sectors
* Recognize Muslims and blacks as official minority groups
* Reduce VAT rates by 50%
* Sanction countries that do not take in refugees
* Sanction and cut off relations with Israel
* Remove Hamas from the EU terrorist list
* The party is positive about Bosnian and Turkish membership in the European Union.
* Make it a right to receive news from authorities in foreign languages

## Election results

In the 2022 Swedish general election, the Nuance Party came ninth with 0.44% of the vote, the highest of any party that did not enter parliament. The party claimed 2.1% of the vote in Malmö, 1.14% in Gothenburg and 0.76% in Stockholm. Some analysts have seen the rise of the Nuance Party as one of the causes of the losses in the left bloc.
The party received 2.44% of the votes in Landskrona Municipality election, and 2.03% of the votes in Botkyrka Municipality, putting them above the 2% minimum needed for a seat on the councils.

### Riksdag

| Election | Votes | % | Seats | +/- | Government |
| 2022 | 28,352 | 0.4 (#9) | 0 / 349 | New | Extra-parliamentary |

### European Parliament

| Election | List leader | Votes | % | Seats | +/– | EP Group |
| 2024 | Mikail Yüksel | 1,772 | 0.04 (#17) | 0 / 21 | New | – |