Denmark votes in close election, outgoing PM tipped to win

After defying US President Donald Trump on Greenland, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen is viewed as the favorite in the general elections that Danes will vote in on Tuesday. Opinion polls indicate that these elections will be close.

After resisting Trump’s repeated requests to annex Greenland, a Danish autonomous area he believes the United States needs for national security reasons, Frederiksen, a Social Democrat who has been in office since 2019, has been commended for her leadership.

However, the campaign has concentrated more on topics like the cost of living, immigration, and the environment than on the controversy surrounding the large Arctic island.

Recent opinion polls credit the left-wing bloc with a slight lead over the right, but neither were seen garnering a majority in the 179-seat parliament.

“The future composition of the (coalition) government is very uncertain, but it is likely that we will end up with (Frederiksen) as head of government,” said Elisabet Svane, political analyst at Danish newspaper Politiken.

“People may not really like her, but they see her as the right leader,” she told AFP.

Frederiksen “is a unifying figure in a world full of insecurity, and Danes are quite anxious — there’s Greenland, Ukraine, (and mystery) drones” that flew over the Scandinavian country last year, Svane said.

In addition, “it’s hard to imagine a right-wing government because it would have to unite such a broad swath, from the far right to the more centrist parties, which are not on very good terms with the far right,” said Ole Waever, a political science professor at the University of Copenhagen.

Polling places open at 8:00 a.m. (0700 GMT) and shut at 8:00 p.m., when exit polls are released. Four hours later, the official results are anticipated.

If the election outcome is extremely close, the four foreign seats held by Denmark’s two autonomous territories—two for Greenland and two for the Faroe Islands—could tip the scales.

If it comes down to it, the centrist Moderate party, led by two-time former prime minister and foreign minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, may potentially be pivotal.