Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Lofven resigned, urging parties to keep trying to find a ruling coalition and warning that an early election during a pandemic would be a bad outcome.

The biggest Nordic economy is mired in a crippling political crisis after the government collapsed following a clash over relaxing rent controls. Lofven lost a confidence vote in parliament last week, triggered by the far-right Sweden Democrats, and has since then tried and failed to lure back a key center-right partner.

Lofven said at a press conference in Stockholm that it’s now up to the speaker of parliament to ask the biggest parties to try to form a new government until scheduled elections take place next year. If that fails after four attempts, an early vote will still have to be called. It would be the first of its kind since 1958.

Swedish politics have been fundamentally altered since the rise of the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, who command just under a fifth of the seats in the country’s parliament. There is a growing realization that keeping them out will not work in the long run.

An extra election might not solve the political deadlock though as polls indicate that there is no clear majority for either Lofven’s Social Democrat-led bloc or its main adversary, the Moderates, who are backed by the Sweden Democrats as well as smaller liberal and conservative parties.