Polling stations across Denmark have closed in a national election that is expected to change the Scandinavian nation’s political landscape as the country’s former prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen appeared to be turning kingmaker.
According to an exit poll, there was no clear majority for either the ruling left-wing or right-wing opposition in Tuesday’s election.
The outcome could pave the way for government across the traditional left-right divide for the first time in more than four decades.
Denmark’s centre-left parties, led by Social Democrat Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, are expected to win 85 seats in the 179-seat parliament and lose their majority, according to an exit poll by public broadcaster DR after polls closed.
Observers had previously predicted that neither the centre-left nor the centre-right would win a majority, namely 90 seats in the Folketing legislature.
That could put Rasmussen, who left his party to form a new one this year, in a kingmaker position as his votes will be needed to form a new government.
The election was sparked by the “mink crisis” that has engulfed Denmark since the government decided in November 2020 to kill the country’s roughly 15 million mink amid fears of a mutated strain of the novel coronavirus.
However, the decision turned out to be unlawful, and a party supporting Frederiksen’s minority social democratic government threatened to overthrow it unless it called new elections to win back voters’ confidence.
More than four million Danish voters can choose between 14 parties. Domestic issues have dominated the campaign, starting with tax cuts and the need to hire more nurses to help financially support Danes in the face of inflation and soaring energy prices due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
At least three politicians are running for the post of prime minister.
They include Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen – who has guided Denmark through the COVID-19 pandemic and has joined forces with the opposition to increase Danish defense spending in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and two centre-right opposition politicians – Jakob Ellemann-Jensen , the leader of the Liberals, and Søren Pape Poulsen, who leads the Conservatives.
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen casts her vote at a polling station in Hareskovhallen in Vaerloese [Sergei Grits/AP]
“We fight to the end. It will be a close election,” Frederiksen said after the vote north of Copenhagen. “I’m optimistic, but I’m not sure about anything.”
Rasmussen, a former leader of the Liberals, founded his new centrist party in June.
According to previous polls, his moderates could get up to 10 percent of the vote. He has indicated that he could see a governing coalition with the Social Democrats and also be a candidate for prime minister.
On the centre-right, two new parties that want to limit immigration are running for parliament and could oust a third similar group that has played a key role in previous governments by pushing for tougher migration rules without becoming part of a governing coalition be.
Among them are the Danish Democrats, founded in June by former hardline immigration minister Inger Støjberg.
In 2021, Støjberg was convicted by the rarely used impeachment court for ordering in 2016 that couples seeking asylum should be separated if one of the partners was a minor.
She has served her 60-day sentence and is now free to run again. Pollsters have said her party could get about 7 percent of the vote.
That could threaten the once-powerful populist, anti-immigrant Danish People’s Party, which has fallen apart amid internal disputes in recent months and is teetering on the 2 percent threshold needed to enter parliament.
In 2015, the party received 21.1 percent of the vote.
People come to cast their ballots at a polling station in the Hareskovhallen sports hall in Vaerlose near Copenhagen [Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP]
Støjberg’s party is similar to another – the small nationalist, anti-immigrant New Right party – that already sits in parliament. They have called for a broad centre-right government.
Frederiksen has led a minority social democratic government since 2019, when she ousted Rasmussen.
Of the 179 seats in the Danish parliament, two each come from the two autonomous regions of Denmark – the Faroe Islands and Greenland.
The vote exceptionally took place on Monday in the Faroe Islands – Tuesday is a public holiday there – and in Denmark one seat went to the centre-left and one to the centre-right, Danish broadcaster DR said on Tuesday. The vote in Greenland will take place on Tuesday.