Danes began voting on Tuesday in general elections, with Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen seen as the favourite after standing up to US President Donald Trump over Greenland.\n<\/p>\n
The latest polls give the left-wing bloc, for which Frederiksen is the self-proclaimed candidate, a nine-seat lead over the right-wing bloc, but neither side is projected to win a majority of the 179 seats in Denmark\u2019s parliament, the Folketing.\n<\/p>\n
Frederiksen, a Social Democrat who has been in office since 2019, has been praised for her leadership after fending off Trump\u2019s repeated demands to annex Greenland, a Danish autonomous territory he claims the United States needs for national security reasons.\n<\/p>\n
At Copenhagen\u2019s City Hall, voters, many on their way to work, lined up under a cloudy sky to cast their ballots as polls opened at 8:00 am (0700 GMT).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe alternatives (to Mette Frederiksen) are worse,\u201d 24-year-old student Freja Strandlod told AFP just after casting her vote in central Copenhagen.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople may not really like her, but they see her as the right leader,\u201d Elisabet Svane, political analyst at Danish newspaper Politiken, told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
Frederiksen, who had \u201ca prime minister you can count on\u201d as one of her campaign slogans, is a unifying figure in a world full of insecurity, and Danes are quite anxious \u2014 there\u2019s Greenland, Ukraine, (and mystery) drones\u201d that flew over the Scandinavian country last year, the Svane said.<\/p>\n
In addition, \u201cit\u2019s 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,\u201d said Ole Waever, a political science professor at the University of Copenhagen.\n<\/p>\n
The four overseas seats held by Denmark\u2019s two autonomous territories \u2014 two for Greenland and two for the Faroe Islands \u2014 could tip the balance if the election result is very close.\n<\/p>\n
The centrist Moderate party, led by Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, a two-time former prime minister, could also prove decisive if things go down to the wire.\n<\/p>\n
\u2013 Interest in Greenland\u00a0\u2013\n<\/p>\n
In Greenland\u2019s capital, Nuuk, the campaign has generated more interest than usual, with more than 20 candidates standing.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this election will kind of show us the direction going forward,\u201d said Juno Berthelsen, a member of Greenland\u2019s local parliament and leader of the Naleraq party, which wants to cut ties with Denmark as soon as possible.\n<\/p>\n
Several of the party\u2019s members have met with the Trump administration.<\/p>\n
Greenland\u2019s main political parties all want independence from Denmark, but Naleraq\u2019s rivals favour a more measured process.\n<\/p>\n
Greenland\u2019s Business Minister Naaja Nathanielsen, a candidate for the left-wing IA party, said fear of the United States had been central to the campaign in Greenland.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cDue to the fact that the US has shown such aggression, you would find a bigger interest in really trying to push the Greenlandic narrative in the Danish parliament,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u2018No place here\u2019 \u2013\n<\/p>\n
In metropolitan Denmark, the row over the vast Arctic island has, however, not been central in the campaign.\n<\/p>\n
In the wealthy nation of six million people, the campaign has instead focused on domestic issues, including inflation, the welfare state and high nitrate levels in water from agriculture.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring the campaign, there weren\u2019t really any key issues for me. I focused on climate policy and looked at the different parties to find the most pragmatic solution,\u201d said William, a 26-year-old trainee lawyer who did not want to give his last name.<\/p>\n
In a country where the far right has heavily influenced policy since the late 1990s, immigration has also been a hot topic, with the Social Democrats advocating even tighter regulations.\n<\/p>\n
Frederiksen has also defended as \u201cfair\u201d a proposal to deny non-essential health care to people of foreign origin who threaten medical personnel.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has to be this way: in addition to the formal punishment in the judicial system, we\u2019re saying, \u2018You have no place here\u2019,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n
Three populist parties are also in the running and opinion polls see them garnering around 19 percent of the vote.\n<\/p>\n
The most established of those is the far-right Danish People\u2019s Party, which slumped in the 2022 election but has seen an upswing in opinion polls.\n<\/p>\n
In metropolitan Denmark, polling stations close at 8:00 pm, with exit polls expected to be published just after.\n<\/p>\n
AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Danes began voting on Tuesday in general elections, with Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen seen as the favourite after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[108,16696,16605,27,26,26572,16851,57,3933,3396,16112],"class_list":["post-47117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-denmark","tag-copenhagen","tag-danish-election","tag-danish-politics","tag-danmark","tag-denmark","tag-folketing","tag-general-election","tag-greenland","tag-lars-lokke-rasmussen","tag-mette-frederiksen","tag-social-democrats"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116283428289357474","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}