The rejection of the US helped her
The decisive rejection of American efforts and Denmark’s transition to a hardline foreign policy gave Frederiksen an immediate rise in popularity. According to polls, her party could win up to 22 percent of the vote, which is almost double that of its nearest competitor. “Trump should not decide on Greenland and he should not decide when the elections will be held in Denmark either,” the Prime Minister declared for the public broadcaster DR.
Paradoxically, it is the Greenlandic voters who can decide whether Frederiksen stays in power. The Danish Parliament (Folketinget) has 179 seats, two of which traditionally belong to representatives of Greenland. If the center-right Greenlandic party Demokraatit wins one of these two seats, it would be the first time this century that a right-wing mandate from the island would go to Copenhagen, which could change the tight math of forming a coalition.
When the left takes over the agenda of the right
Danish social democracy has undergone an ideological transformation over the past decade that has no parallel in Europe. While in other European countries left-wing parties promote a more open approach to refugees, the Danish government has opted for an extremely restrictive policy. The basic philosophy of this approach is the protection of the welfare state. “To understand the Nordic social system, you have to know that you contribute while you can and take when you have to. That’s built into it,” explains Stubager.
The prime minister has long defended this position by arguing that excessive immigration directly threatens the working class, which faces pressure on social services, public schools and affordable housing, while the wealthier classes are not affected by these problems. The result is a series of tough legislative measures, such as the so-called “parallel societies” law, which allows the state to demolish housing units in segregated neighborhoods dominated by non-Western residents.
Professor of political science from Aarhus University Rune Stubager points out that the topic of immigration is again a key point of the campaign. In fact, there are also proposals that in the past were exclusively the domain of the extreme right. An example is a proposal according to which individuals who commit violence against medical personnel should be denied access to free health care, except in emergencies. The proponents of this proposal made no secret of the fact that the target group is primarily people from the “wider Middle East”.
Meanwhile, the extreme right, namely the Danish People’s Party, pushes the boundaries even further and calls for “remigration” – i.e. reaching a state where the net migration of Muslims from the country will be negative and when it will be “almost impossible to live in an Islamic way” in Denmark.
In addition, the state strictly guards who it permanently accepts into the community. The granting of citizenship takes place through a direct vote in , which is preceded by a background check. “There is discussion about vetting people to see if they have undemocratic or un-Danish attitudes or values,” Stubager describes. There are known cases where the parliament blocked the granting of citizenship based only on older, ideologically inappropriate posts on Facebook.
Pigs and polluted water
While abroad the subject of Greenland and migration dominates, according to Stubager, the Danish domestic political campaign rests on two other massive pillars: social inequality and a surprising ecological problem.
Denmark holds the world record for the number of pigs per capita. However, this is starting to take a huge toll on the environment. “There are serious concerns about the contamination of drinking water with pesticides and nitrates that come from the huge amount of animal manure from this industry,” explains Stubager. In addition, this topic resonates particularly well among voters. Politicians are thus forced to look for solutions to more strictly regulate agrolobbies.
The second domestic political priority is the effort of the Social Democrats to iron out their excessive shift to the political center. Although a hard line on migration helps the party in the countryside, it pays a heavy toll in urban politics. The most visible evidence was the historic loss of the mayor’s seat in Copenhagen – after a whopping 122 years. Real estate prices in the capital pushed the working class to the margins, and the progressive urban intelligentsia in turn drifted to the more radical left and green parties.
Taxes for the super-rich as a path to the left
However, in order to win the left-wing voter back, Frederiksen presented a package of measures aimed at combating social inequality. This includes the introduction of a half-percent property tax for the richest Danes (with assets over 25 million Danish kroner) in order to finance the reduction of classes in schools, or a differentiated pension system enabling earlier retirement for people who work hard physically.
This step immediately provoked a sharp reaction from Danish billionaires and companies such as Lego and Vestas, who are threatening to leave the country. But he fell on fertile ground among ordinary left-wing voters.
However, political scientist Stubager draws attention to one important political paradox. Although the Social Democrats lost some progressive voters from the cities, they did not move to the right. They gave their votes to other left-wing parties (Green Left, Red-Green Alliance), which, despite their reservations about migration policy, will always support the Frederiksen-led government in order to prevent the rise of the right.
The Danish elections will thus be a test of the sustainability of this unique power model. At a time when traditional social democracy in Europe is looking for answers to the rise of populism, Denmark is showing a path that is often questionable from the point of view of human rights, but politically bulletproof. The result on March 24 will tell whether a coalition built on a combination of closed borders, defiance of world powers, taxation of the super-rich and the fight for clean water can be sustained over the long term.
