The Social Democratic Party of the Danish Prime Minister, , has comfortably won the parliamentary elections this Tuesday. With 99% of the vote counted, it amounts to 21.9% of the votes. The Green Left is located at a great distance (11,6%) and the Liberal Party (10.1%). Even so, the president, in office since 2019, obtains a poor result and faces arduous negotiations to be able to continue leading the Government.
Frederiksen, 48, decided in February to bring forward the elections, initially scheduled for autumn, after his firm response to Donald Trump’s threats to take control of Greenland, the largest island on the planet, belonging to the Kingdom of Denmark.
Despite the clear victory, the Social Democratic Party—which obtained 27.5% of support—loses 12 of its 50 seats, which is its worst result since 1903. Frederiksen, one of the most influential figures in European social democracy, governed as a minority during his first term with the support of the parties of the so-called red bloc. After the elections four years ago, the prime minister chose to break with the traditional system that for decades divided the parties between left and right and opted for an unprecedented formula in Danish politics with the Liberal Party and The Moderates, a centrist formation that was participating in elections for the first time.
The red block parties have 84 seats, compared to 77 for the blue block. The 14 deputies that the Moderates obtain, who do not fit into either the left or the right, will be decisive for the future formation of the Government. Its leader, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, former prime minister and current foreign minister, has insisted in recent weeks on his intention to talk with all parties with parliamentary representation to analyze which combinations could achieve a majority.
With the scrutiny well underway, late Wednesday morning, Rasmussen has urged Frederiksen and the leader of the Liberal Party and current Minister of Defense, Troels Lund Poulsen, to abandon the distancing shown in the electoral campaign. “Come with us. We are in the middle. You have preferred to place yourself in a corner. We are still here,” Rasmussen declared at his party’s election party. “There is no majority, neither on our left nor on our right,” the centrist leader stressed.
During the election campaign, Frederiksen avoided making a clear statement about which parties could become his minority partners in a future government coalition. Even so, the social democratic leader has reiterated that it would be a mistake to return to the traditional block system. “Danish politics cannot be simplified between reds and blues,” he stressed at a rally last Sunday.
“I remain ready to take on the responsibility as Prime Minister of Denmark for the next four years,” declared Frederiksen, the last of the candidates to appear before the media. The prime minister has acknowledged that she expected a better result, and that “it will not be easy” to form a government coalition, but she has stressed that her party has won the elections with a wide margin.
Several Danish political analysts have speculated after knowing the electoral result with the formation of a new center Government that, apart from the three current forces, would also include the Conservative Party and the Social Liberal Party, located in the left bloc.
At the end of last year, Frederiksen’s chances of winning a third term seemed very slim. The polls gave him barely 17% of support and, in the November municipal elections, he lost the mayoralty of Copenhagen for the first time in more than a century. The crisis caused by Trump in January, with his threats to annex Greenland to the United States—without even ruling out the use of military force—allowed Frederiksen to regain some of the popularity he had lost in recent years. If the social democratic leader finally achieves the necessary support for a third consecutive term, she will become the leader who has governed the Scandinavian country for the longest time since World War II.
The social democratic leader, deeply pro-European and firm defender of the Ukrainian cause, has remained at the head of the Executive during her seven years, highly criticized by some of the left-wing parties.
Division on the right
The division in the right-wing bloc parties limits the possibilities that they can unseat Frederiksen from the Government. The Liberal Party, headed by Minister Poulsen, which emerged as one of the prime minister’s main rivals – despite being part of the current government coalition – has obtained only 10.1% of support (3.2% less than in 2022), the worst result in its more than 150-year history.
Even so, the party led by the Minister of Defense remains the leading force on the right. A very short distance away is the Liberal Alliance, which has focused its message on a drastic reduction in taxes and a commitment to nuclear energy, and has garnered 9.4% of the votes, which will add two seats to the 14 it already had. Its leader, Alex Vanopslagh, 34, very popular among young people, shook the final stretch of the campaign by admitting last week that he had used cocaine — “once or twice, at most” — since he has been at the head of the party. However, his confession does not seem to have taken its toll, since the training has obtained a result quite similar to what the surveys anticipated.
The Danish People’s Party, one of the first far-right parties to overcome the barrier of 10% of the votes in a parliamentary election in Europe – it achieved this in 2001 – is regaining weight in the politics of the Nordic country with 9.1% of support, more than triple that of four years ago, when it achieved a terrible result that seemed to lead it to irrelevance. With 16 seats, 11 more than it currently has, it will become – along with the Liberal Alliance – the fourth parliamentary force in the Folketing (the Danish Parliament).
Up to 12 political forces have overcome the minimum barrier of 2% and will have parliamentary representation, the same number as in the current legislature.
The four deputies – out of a total of 179 – who are equally divided between Greenland and , the two autonomous territories of the Kingdom of Denmark, can also be decisive in deciding who will govern the next four years in the Scandinavian country, with six million inhabitants.
Although the Greenland crisis dominated the Danish political agenda in January, the election campaign revolved around a wealth tax – which would affect the country’s 20,000 richest people and which Frederiksen has pledged to introduce to increase funding for education, health and social services -, pension reform, immigration and state aid aimed at cushioning the impact of the war in Iran.
