Exit polls in Denmark show that there is no clear majority of left or right coalitions to form the next government after elections held this Tuesday (1st).
The center-left coalition in power under the leadership of Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, according to the survey commissioned by public broadcaster DR, would take 85 seats in the 179-seat parliament. The opposition coalition, on the right, would take 73.
With the share of 17 seats, the Moderates, led by ex-premier Lars Lokke Rasmussen, would gain bargaining power to influence the formation of a majority with one of the two blocks.
4,161 people were interviewed in the survey by the Epinion company, and the margin of error is 2 percentage points, more or less.
If confirmed, the result could, for the first time in four decades, pave the way for a government outside the traditional right-left divide, forcing one of the two wings to negotiate the support of the Moderates to ascend to power.
Throughout the campaign, the party has not expressed support for either of the Nordic country’s two coalitions. Recently formed – born last year –, the party was founded after Rasmussen left the acronym for which he was twice elected prime minister (2009-2011 and 2015-2019), the center-right Liberal Party (Venstre).
Mette Frederiksen’s term was due to end in June 2023, but the prime minister was forced to bring forward the elections after smaller parties, some including her supporters, threatened to call for a vote of no confidence in parliament.
The trigger was the so-called “mink crisis”, when the government proposed the slaughter of all 17 million mink in farms in the country to contain alleged mutations of the coronavirus – the plan was suspended in November 2020, after widespread criticism. Denmark is one of the main exporters of the skin of these animals.
“If there is no majority, as appears to be the case, moderates are indispensable to form a government,” Rune Stubager, a professor of political science at Aarhus University, told AFP.
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