Denmark’s centre-left prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has the lowest majority in the country’s parliamentary elections, but he will struggle to form a viable government coalition.
Frederiksen’s left-wing bloc won 28 percent of the vote and exactly the 90 seats needed for a majority, thanks to three mandates from Greenland and the Faroe Islands, after a tough election Tuesday night.
Wednesday morning, Frederiksen She reiterated her campaign promise to try to form a centrist coalition between left and right parties and said her current government would resign.
The Social Democrats went to the polls to form a broad government. If the majority of the parties refer to me [as prime minister] I’ll see if this can be done. Because this is good for Denmark, Frederiksen said after her Social Democratic Party got the best election results in two decades.
The result was a huge victory for Frederiksen, who was forced to call early elections after her government Failed execution Mink up to 17mn last year.
Frederiksen, widely seen as the most powerful prime minister in Denmark’s history, emphasized her decisive response to the Covid-19 pandemic during the campaign and said the Scandinavian country needed a safe hand to guide it through its cost-of-living crisis and Increased tensions with Russia in the Baltic Sea.
Until now, Danish politics has adhered strictly to the separation of the left and right blocs, which alternate in power.
But both Frederiksen and her predecessor, Lars-Locke Rasmussen, said they would like to see a centrist government that includes the main parties from left and right to reduce the influence of smaller parties, especially those of the extreme.
Rasmussen’s Moderates party, founded just six months ago, became the third largest group in parliament, with 16 seats, and said it could support either a left- or right-wing government.
Former Social Democratic prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt told the Financial Times: “It could be a new way of doing things. We haven’t talked much about this middle ground and finding middle ground. This is a very interesting evening in Danish politics.”
On Wednesday, Rasmussen said Frederiksen should be given the first chance to form a government. Jacob Engel Schmidt, political head of the moderates, told the Financial Times that his party wants a government with both left and right parties.
“With the security situation in Europe, the energy crisis and the inflation crisis, we believe that politicians need to work together and make certain reforms that take care of the welfare state in the future,” he added.
Lars Lok Rasmussen, the former prime minister, says he would like a government made up of right-wing and left-wing parties. © Martin Sylvest / Ritzau Scanpix / AFP / Getty Images
But Frederiksen will face a difficult negotiating task. Many smaller left-wing parties want them to form a purely left-wing government rather than including moderates or centre-right parties.
At least 14 parties sought to enter Parliament and 12 took seats – four more likely to come from the Faroe Islands and Greenland – resulting in one of Europe’s most divided political scenes.
Frederiksen moved her SPD sharply to the right on issues such as immigration before previous elections, leading to a collapse of support for the populist Danish People’s Party.
The second most popular party in 2015, when one in five Danes supported it, the Danish People’s Party polled just above the 2 percent threshold needed to enter parliament on Tuesday, its worst result.
The main party on the right, the Liberals, the former Rasmussen party, also had its worst result in 34 years, scoring around 13 percent.