Prime Minister Mette Fredriksen’s Social Democrats won the most votes in Denmark’s election on Tuesday, but it was unclear whether the centre-left faction supporting his government would retain its majority in parliament.
Prime Minister Mette Fredriksen’s Social Democrats won the most votes in Denmark’s election on Tuesday, but it was unclear whether the centre-left faction supporting his government would retain its majority in parliament.
Prime Minister Mette Fredriksson’s Social Democrats won the most votes in the Danish election on 1 November, but it was unclear whether the centre-left faction supporting his government would retain its majority in parliament.
With 97% of the votes counted, the centre-left bloc was just one seat short of a majority, which would have left former prime minister Lars Locke Rasmussen as kingmaker. According to official results, his newly formed centrist party won 9% of the vote.
Ms Frederickson was forced to call an election earlier this month as a result of her government’s controversial decision to eliminate millions of minks as a pandemic response measure. Substandard and chilling images of mink mass graves have haunted Ms Fredriksen since 2020 and eventually led to cracks in the centre-left block.
The Social Democrats remained Denmark’s top party with 28% support, but it remained unclear as of late Tuesday whether the centre-left bloc would reach the 90 seats needed for a majority in the 179-seat parliament. Exit polls suggested it would fall short, but as the counting of votes was about to end, the block was set to win 89 seats, close enough for a last-minute flip.
Locke Rasmussen, a two-time government leader who lost the 2019 election to Ms Fredriksen and left the centre-right Liberal Party after an internal power struggle, would not say who or what he would back as the next prime minister. He saw that role for himself.
“I know for certain that Denmark needs a new government,” he told enthusiastic supporters in Copenhagen. “Who’s going to sit at the end of the table, we don’t know.”
Prior to the election, 44-year-old Ms Fredriksson had proposed a broad coalition that would also include opposition parties, but opposition leaders Jakob Allemann-Jensen of the Liberals and Sren Pep Poulsen of the Conservatives, who both ran as candidates. had rejected it. For the prime minister in a centre-right government.
Denmark’s more than 4 million voters can choose – at most – from more than 1,000 candidates from 14 parties. Of the 179 seats in the Danish legislature, Folketinget, four are reserved for the Faroe Islands and Greenland, which are autonomous Danish territories.
Concerns about rising inflation and energy prices associated with Russia’s war in Ukraine and a shortage of nurses in the public health care system were prominent themes in the election campaigns.
“I think it is important and of concern to many people, whether it is electricity, bread or gasoline,” said Inge Bjre Hansen (82) after casting his vote in Copenhagen. “My son is reducing his number of trips because filling the tank (of his car) has become expensive.”
Unlike previous elections, immigration received little attention. Denmark has some of the strictest immigration laws in Europe and there is widespread agreement among the major parties to keep it that way.
That and internal strife help explain the collapse of the populist Danish People’s Party, which led Denmark’s crackdown on immigration two decades ago. Once over 20% of the vote, the party recorded its worst parliamentary election result since its inception in 1995, with nearly 3% of the vote, results show.
The Danish People’s Party faced competition for the nationalist electorate of the new right-wing parties. Among them are the Danish Democrats, created in June by former hardline immigration minister Inger Stojberg. In 2021, Stausberg was convicted of a 2016 order by the rarely used impeachment court to separate asylum-seeking couples if one of the partners was a minor.
She was eligible to run for office again after serving a 60-day sentence. Official results showed that his party got 8%.
Ms Fredriksson, who became Denmark’s youngest prime minister when she took office more than three years ago at the age of 41, worked with the opposition to help NATO-member Denmark’s defense spending in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. increased. His resolute leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic was partially stymied by the mink-culling episode.
The decision to slaughter up to 17 million minks to protect humans from mutating the coronavirus was taken hastily and without the necessary legislation. This dealt a devastating blow to Danish mink farmers, even though there was no evidence that the mutated virus found among some minks was more dangerous than other strains.
A commission appointed by Parliament in June criticized the Social Democratic government for its handling of the issue. It threatened one of the centre-left parties to support Ms Fredrickson in parliament with a no-confidence vote, prompting her to call an election earlier this month.