Denmark held early legislative elections on Tuesday that, according to exit polls, did not give a majority to either the center-left bloc of the Social Democratic Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, or the right-wing opposition. The great beneficiary is the new centrist party, Los Moderados, which has become an arbiter to forge the future government. Fourteen parties attended the elections.
According to the projections of public television DR, the left-wing bloc led by Frederiksen would obtain 85 seats compared to 73 for the informal alliance of liberals and conservatives with three populist parties. None would therefore have enough to obtain an absolute majority in the Folketing, the Danish Parliament, made up of 179 seats. Thus, the 17 seats of The Moderates – a new formation headed by former liberal Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and which is committed to a center government – would be decisive.
The remaining four seats in the hemicycle correspond to the two Danish autonomous territories, the Faroe Islands and Greenland. Almost 4.3 million Danes were called to the polls in this Nordic country of 5.8 million inhabitants. The Social Democratic Party received the most votes with 23.1%, ahead of the Liberal Party, with 13.6%, in a highly fragmented Parliament in which up to twelve parties would obtain representation.
Mette Frederiksen, who more than three years ago became Denmark’s youngest prime minister when she took office at the age of 41, joined the opposition to increase NATO member Denmark’s defense spending after the Russian invasion. from Ukraine. Her firm leadership during the covid pandemic was overshadowed in part by what was the trigger for these early elections – which were held seven months before the end of the legislature -, the so-called ‘mink crisis’ ‘.
A party that supported Frederiksen’s minority government threatened to drop it if the prime minister did not call elections to guarantee voter confidence after the government’s decision, later declared illegal, to slaughter the country’s minks in November 2020 to fight against coronavirus.
The decision to cull up to 17 million mink to protect humans from a coronavirus mutation was made hastily and without the required legislation. The culling dealt a devastating blow to Danish mink breeders, even though there was no evidence that the mutation detected in some minks was more dangerous than other strains.
This issue has barely come up in the election campaign, which has been dominated by the climate issue, the cost of living – inflation is at its highest point in 40 years – high energy prices linked to the Russian war against Ukraine and the shortage of nurses in the health system. Unlike previous elections, immigration has received little attention. Denmark has some of the most restrictive immigration laws in Europe and there is a broad consensus among the main parties to keep it that way. Adhering to a strict policy, the outgoing Social Democratic government has worked to locate an asylum seeker management center in Rwanda.
The seats of the Faroe Islands, which held the elections exceptionally on Monday, October 31, went to the Unionist Party and the Social Democratic Party, which support, respectively, the opposition bloc and the center-left. Election day in the Faroes was held on Monday, after the Danish Parliament agreed to change the date only for that territory so that it would not coincide with the national day of homage to those killed at sea, of great importance in this archipelago whose The main economic activity is fishing.
