COPENHAGEN – Denmark votes Tuesday in a tight general election, with Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen seeking a third term after a campaign focused on domestic issues and set against tensions with the US over Greenland.
Frederiksen, 48, has benefited from her image as an experienced leader, but her party’s support has slipped sharply.
The Social Democrats still lead in the polls, though they are expected to shed about six points compared with the 2022 election.
Eleven other parties are vying for the 179 seats in the Folketing, Denmark’s parliament, each running separately and not as part of a coalition or alliance.
Pollsters and analysts traditionally group them into two blocs: red for the left wing and blue for the right wing.
But the Moderates, founded by Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, sit outside both and could play kingmaker in coalition talks.
“There’s a tie in many opinion polls where the Moderates… are the pivotal party, so they get to decide,” University of Copenhagen political scientist Karina Kosiara-Pedersen told AFP.
“In some opinion polls, the red bloc — the prime minister’s bloc — has got the majority, so it’s quite likely that the prime minister will be Social Democratic… but it is definitely not decided,” she said.
The four overseas seats held by Denmark’s two autonomous territories — two for Greenland and two for the Faroe Islands — could also tip the balance.
Given the far-right Danish People’s Party’s (DF) negative stance on Greenland, “even a moderately right-wing Greenlandic MP would find it very hard to support a Danish government backed by DF,” explained Ole Waever, professor of international relations at the University of Copenhagen.
This “could be the case for all right-wing coalitions,” he added.
