In a general election largely seen as a vote of confidence in the country’s leader, Denmark’s center-left received the most votes.
The “red bloc” of parties led by Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has won the necessary 90 MPs to establish a government.
Her Social Democrats achieved their greatest outcome in twenty years after shockingly picking up two seats.
She has submitted the resignation of the government to the queen though because she wants to put together a larger coalition.
In October, Ms. Frederiksen was compelled to call an early election.
It came following fury over a study that was published over the summer and was harshly critical of her government’s conduct of a nationwide mink cull at fur farms at the height of the pandemic.
The government’s directive to kill up to 17 million mink in 2020 was judged to be without legal justification in the report’s conclusions. At the time, there were worries that the discovery of a mutant coronavirus in mink might impede efforts to develop a vaccine.
Even though it was determined that Ms. Frederiksen was unaware that the order was unlawful, the news shook her coalition, and one of its parties threatened to stop supporting the government if she did not call a general election.
Tuesday’s vote-counting process left it unclear until the very end whether the right-of-center “blue bloc,” led by Jakob Ellemann-Liberals, Jensen’s or Ms. Frederiksen’s “red bloc” would get a majority.
In light of this, there were also concerns that the newly founded Moderates party, led by two-term former prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, might wind up in power if neither faction received a majority.
Given that they did not even exist five months prior to the election, the Moderates achieved huge gains and rose to become Denmark’s third-largest party. However, they will not be the deciding factor in the formation of the next government.
The winning alliance was Ms. Frederiksen’s, winning 87 seats on Danish territory.
Additionally, they gained one seat in the Faroe Islands and are expected to win two more in Greenland, a sovereign Danish dependency that frequently chooses left-wing candidates. They would get a majority of one seat and 90 seats in the Folketinget as a result.
The Social Democrats of Ms. Frederiksen, who belonged to the red bloc, also gained two seats and received more than 25% of the vote (27.5%), making them by far the largest party in the Folketing.
Speaking at her election night reception in Copenhagen’s capital, Ms. Frederiksen declared, “Social democracy had its finest election in over 20 years.”
She continued by saying that even though her red coalition had won, she still desired to work with the center to forge a larger alliance.
We are a party that represents all of Denmark, she declared.
On Wednesday morning, Ms. Frederiksen informed Queen Margrethe of the election results. Rather than continuing in her position as prime minister, she submitted the resignation of the government and requested the start of the procedure known as the “queen’s round” or “dronningerunde,” which comes before the formation of a government.
All the parties will meet with the queen to pick who would oversee coalition negotiations; Mette Frederiksen is a popular choice for the position. In the wee hours of Wednesday, she promised supporters that, if elected, she would subsequently try to build a large-scale administration.
She asserted that the Social Democrats always follow through on their promises.