Post-closing polls suggest prime minister is back in office but needs centrist support to rule
The Danish Social Democracy defended its leadership in the parliamentary elections in that Scandinavian country on Tuesday, but everything indicates that Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen will need new support to rule. The first exit polls on DR public television, broadcast minutes after polling stations closed, gave the center-left ruling bloc 47.5% last night.
Frederiksen’s Social Democratic Party received the most votes -23.1%-, ten points above its immediate successor, the Liberal Party. Frederiksen and his allies would be five seats less than the 90 they need for a parliamentary majority. The rival center-right bloc would sit in all 73 seats.
With major fragmentation and 14 parties in the fray, the 17 deputies apparently have The Moderates, a new group led by former Liberal Prime Minister Lars Løøkke Rasmussen, could be decisive. That is, Frederiksen’s predecessor in office. Thus, the prophecies would be fulfilled before what was seen as an election with an uncertain end. Frederiksen’s percentage victory was self-evident if one defended the first position for the Social Democrats with victory. But in parliamentary systems like the Scandinavian one, coming first doesn’t necessarily mean winning.
Rasmussen – prime minister between 2009 and 2011 and then repeated between 2015 and 2019 – had taken off at the head of his new party in the latter part of the campaign. He is a charismatic or even close-knit politician, in the eyes of the Danes, and with a recognized tenacity when it comes to weaving -and achieving- convenient alliances for his formation. Already in the final phase of the campaign, Frederiksen began to feel complicity with Rasmussen, aware of his growing appeal among the electorate. If the joining of forces indicated by the first polls is consolidated, the former Liberal Prime Minister is destined to become a key figure or even an arbitrator for the formation of the future government.
The return of Rasmussen has turned the Danish administration upside down as far as the center is concerned. Things have also changed at the ends. The far-right Danish People’s Party (DF), a xenophobic formation catapulted as the second most voted power in the 2015 elections, perpetuates its recent freefall by remaining at 2.5%, half a point above the minimum for seats. .
The vote for the radical right has not disappeared, but it has shifted or fragmented: Democrats from Denmark, who are on that spectrum, stood at a comfortable 6.9%.
Parliamentary elections were held in advance, after years of strong pressure on the head of government. The trigger was the sacrifice of 15 million mink dictated in 2019. It was a decision related to a health warning amid the coronavirus pandemic and in case a mutation should render the future vaccine ineffective.
Frederiksen, with a reputation as a strong or even authoritarian leader, did not hesitate to issue that order, despite not having the precise legal backing. The fur industry of a leading country in this sector screamed into the skies. It entered a phase of instability, attacked by the opposition and pressured within its bloc. In the end, one of her government allies deserted her.
Denmark has long since moved past Covid restrictions – one of the lightest in Europe – but the political scandal continued. This tiny country’s just over four million voters were eventually called upon to vote in the elections seven weeks after those of their Swedish neighbours.
In Sweden too, the Social Democracy defended the first position. But his prime minister, Magdalena Andersson, had to give way to conservative Ulf Kristersson, who had come in third. The second, far-right Jimmie Äkeson, has been given the role of “external ally” to the new centre-right coalition, with several members excluding him as a partner. The situation in Denmark is different. Frederiksen, a hard-core Social Democrat with stances on immigration similar to those of the right-wing bloc, is seen as capable of negotiating or collaborating with any centrist force. Everything can depend on Rasmussen.
Source: La Verdad
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