Center-left coalition achieves slim majority in Danish elections

The camp surrounding the Social Democratic prime minister’s office
Frederiksen comes with exactly the 90 required authorizations. During the election campaign, she announced that she would strive to cooperate across the political milieu.

Center-left coalition around the Social-Democratic Prime Minister Mitt Frederiksen He won a slim majority in Denmark’s elections. After all the votes cast in the country were counted, the left-wing camp managed to secure a majority of 90 out of 179 seats on Wednesday evening. The bourgeois opposition won 73 seats. The new “Moderates” party led by former Prime Minister Lars Lok Rasmussen is moving into Parliament with 16 deputies.

175 of the 179 states in Denmark have been granted, two each in Greenland and the Faroe Islands, both of which are officially part of the Kingdom of Denmark. The Faroe Islands mandate was already split between the two blocs on Monday. As in the last six elections, Greenland’s two mandates went to the red block early Wednesday morning with nearly all votes counted. The center-left coalition should end with exactly 90 mandates.

Broad government across the political center

The Social Democrats led by Frederiksen are the clear winners of the election: 27.5 percent of voters voted for the party, giving it 50 seats in parliament in Copenhagen. Compared to the 2019 elections, the party gained 1.6 percentage points. Frederiksen spoke to party supporters early Wednesday morning about the best election result in 20 years. But: “It is also clear that there is no longer a majority behind the government in its current form.” So she wants to present the resignation of her government to Queen Margaret II on Wednesday.

With the resignation, Frederiksen wants to pave the way for a so-called new queen tour. He is looking for which of the party leaders has the best chance of finding a new government. As the Social Democrats once again become a stronger force, Frederiksen is likely to receive this exploratory mandate again. She could then proceed to explore the possibilities of forming a broad government across the political milieu, a rarity for Denmark.

“The results show that there is once again a red majority in Parliament,” said the leader of the defeated Liberals, Jacob Ellmann Jensen, after the results were published. His Fenster party, which leads the centre-right coalition, lost about ten percentage points. After 23.4 percent in the last election in 2019, this time it’s only 13.3 percent. However, it was still the second most powerful force behind the Social Democrats led by Frederiksen.

The former prime minister is not a kingmaker after all

A central question in future government negotiations will be to what extent Frederiksen can cooperate with her predecessor Locke. He served as Prime Minister from 2009 to 2011 and from 2015 to 2019. He left the conservative liberal party Venstre in 2021 after decades. After that, Loki founded the Moderates Party, who would now be the third strongest force in their debut with 9.3 percent of the vote.

During the election campaign, Frederiksen emphasized several times that he was aiming for broad government cooperation across the political milieu. The red majority must significantly improve its negotiating position in this regard: if the newly established moderate party of former Prime Minister Rasmussen or the parties of the center-right blue bloc standing between the blocs do not respond to their demands, they can apply significant pressure with the potential client, returning to the bloc red instead. He already supports Frederiksen’s former Social Democratic minority government in Parliament.

On some things, such as her strict immigration policy, Frederiksen often relied on voices from the right. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there was also cooperation between the blocs on military issues, and recently there was also cooperation in support of the Danes in the fight against the sharp rise in energy prices.

(APA/dpa/AFP)