For the first time since 1938, Denmark’s capital, Copenhagen, will not have a social democratic mayor. The party of Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has suffered an electoral setback never seen before in the municipal and regional elections that were held this Tuesday. The reason? As always, several, but there is one that stands out above all: housing. The ERC spokesperson, Gabriel Rufián, already said it in Parliament: housing is the greatest threat to governments, rather the absence of solutions to the increase in prices. In Copenhagen, house prices have increased by 20% in the last year alone. The Danish capital is one of the ten most expensive cities in Europe in which to rent an apartment. Behind, of course, Barcelona and Madrid, even more expensive and whose Mayor’s Offices could well understand what happened almost 2,500 kilometers away as a bad omen if no remedies are found.
Although the defeat in Copenhagen is the most painful, the Social Democratic Party has lost steam throughout the country. “We expected to make a comeback, but it seems that the decline is greater than expected. We will analyze the causes,” said the prime minister after knowing the results. They were counting on a defeat because the polls announced it, not only because of the housing problem but also due to the approach of the social democrats to more conservative positions, to positions, well, typical of the political right, even the extreme right.
In 2019, Mette Frederiksen became prime minister for the first time, the youngest ever in Denmark (41 years old), thanks to a progressive coalition agreement, but after the 2022 elections, The social democratic leader decided to form a new government with the center-right and right-wing politicians. In Denmark, political analysts do not doubt that this turn has reduced support among the most popular sections of its voters. Because not only did he choose the right, but His policies became increasingly conservativeespecially in matters of immigration, but also for its determination to support the enormous European rearmament proposed by NATO and the European Commission. Despite everything, during his assessment of the results, Frederiksen, who faces a general election next year, did not seem to have listened to the position of the electorate. “We live in an insecure world and we need considerable rearmament,” he said, also blaming the result on crimes committed by “people who come from outside.” This last position has been able to win him more votes in the rural world, but many fewer in the cities.
After 100 years, Copenhagen will be governed by the leftspecifically by a progressive and environmental coalition between the Popular Socialist Party and the Red-Green Alliance. Even if the winners were the latter, with more than 20% of the votes, the Mayor’s Office will remain in the hands of the former, who have managed to gather more support. In any case, both formations, together, but also separately, have managed to surpass the social democratic candidate, Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil, a close friend of Frederiksen and who was Minister of Social Affairs and Housing from 2022 to 2024. From the left, this responsibility was used a lot during the campaign. If the Government could not reduce the cost of housing, how would it do it in the city?
The victory of the left against European social democracy is seen by some as an example that not only the extreme right can be the recipient of citizen discontent. They compare what happened in Copenhagen with Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New Yorka member of the Democratic Party who, however, is quite far from the status quo of the party. “The dominant narrative is that far-right forces are advancing steadily, focusing their campaigns on the cost of living, an issue that traditional parties seem incapable of addressing. However, Tuesday’s elections in Copenhagen are notable because the winners are openly left-wing forces, who have taken on issues such as the housing crisis. This is reminiscent of the recent victory of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in New York, which was followed with great attention by the European left,” they write.
No one yet dares to extrapolate the result of these elections to the Danish general elections next year, but of course the Social Democrats, still devastated, are already aware that approaching conservative positions does not work; not if they want to keep the left-wing voter, whose living conditions they claim to defend.
