copenhagen, denmark
AP
—
Denmark’s general election on Tuesday ended inconclusively, leaving the prime minister’s future uncertain after a campaign that focused more on substantive issues than addressing the crisis over US President Donald Trump’s Greenland ambitions.
Official results show that Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s centre-left Social Democratic Party, like her two outgoing government partners, has lost ground compared to the last election in 2022.
Neither the left-wing nor the right-wing blocs achieved a majority in parliament. This left the experienced Foreign Minister Lars Lökke Rasmussen, a former prime minister, in the role of kingmaker.
Frederiksen’s Centrist Moderate Party has 14 members in the 179-member parliament and is in a position to decide whether he can serve a third term at the helm of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member state.
Mr Frederiksen said he was prepared to remain as prime minister. “The world is unstable. Strong winds are blowing around us,” she said. “Denmark needs a stable government, a competent government. We are ready to take the lead.”
Kingmaker wants rivals to come and play with him
Loke Rasmussen called on his rivals on the left and right to step down from some of the positions they staked out during the election campaign and “come and play with us.”
Denmark is “a small country of 6 million people in a world of 8 billion people, but it’s in turmoil, and there are wars in Iran and Ukraine,” he said. “We are one tribe. We must be united. We must not be divided.”
But Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen, Frederiksen’s most likely centre-right opponent, has made it clear that he and the Freedom Party will not again form a government with the Social Democrats.
The Social Democratic Party remained the single largest party, but with 21.9% of the vote, significantly lower than the 27.5% it won in the 2022 election.
Frederiksen, 48, is known to be a strong supporter of Ukraine’s defense of the country against Russian aggression and its restrictive approach to immigration, continuing what has become a tradition in Danish politics.
Frederiksen called the election in February, months before the election. She appeared to have hoped that her resolute image during the conflict over President Donald Trump’s bid to rally European allies behind Denmark and control Greenland would help him win over voters.
His support has been waning for some time now as the rising cost of living has become a key campaign issue, along with the possibility of a pension and wealth tax.
No party was expected to come close to winning a majority. Denmark’s proportional representation system typically creates a coalition government, traditionally made up of parties from either the left-wing Red Bloc or the right-wing Blue Bloc, after several weeks of negotiations.
Morten Kressen, a member of the Social Democratic Party, said that although the outgoing government had done well, “there were a lot of problems in Europe and I think our government was focused on Ukraine, so I think we lost a little bit of domestic votes.” He argued that “for solidarity, Europe needs a Mette Frederiksen.”
Frederiksen himself said he had hoped for a better result, but it was normal for parties seeking a third term to stall. She compared Tuesday’s results to the 25.9% vote the party received in 2019, when she became prime minister.
“I have been in charge of this great country for nearly seven years,” she said. “We’ve had to live through a pandemic, we’ve had to deal with a war, we’ve had threats from the president of the United States, and we’ve seen a 4% decline in about seven years.”
Greenland wasn’t a big issue in the election campaign.
Although Greenland has occupied much of the government’s energy in recent months, it has not been a key issue in the campaign as there is broad agreement about Greenland’s place within Saudi Arabia.
Frederiksen warned in January that the U.S. occupation of Greenland would lead to the end of NATO. But the crisis has subsided, at least for now.
The United States, Denmark and Greenland have begun technical talks on an Arctic security agreement after President Trump withdrew his threat to impose tariffs on Denmark and other European countries that oppose U.S. control of the vast Arctic island.
Denmark’s unicameral parliament, the Folketing, is elected to four-year terms. Denmark holds 175 seats, with two seats each from sparsely populated Greenland and the Faroe Islands, the kingdom’s other semi-autonomous region.
More than 4.3 million people were eligible to vote.
