twice as many pigs<\/a> \u2014 12 million \u2014 as people, one of the world\u2019s highest concentrations of pigs per person.<\/p>\nEnvironmentalists in Denmark and their political allies blame pig farmers (and other farmers) for a high level of nitrates in the soil and possible contamination of drinking water. Ms. Frederiksen aligned herself with the left on this issue, which earned her the ire of many farmers.<\/p>\n
Many of these farmers are wealthy, and they don\u2019t like Ms. Frederiksen\u2019s embrace of a potential wealth tax, either. Some of the moderate parties campaigned against this tax, which could now make negotiations with them more complicated.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe election campaign has been very, very domestic,\u201d said Kasper Moller Hansen, a political scientist at the University of Copenhagen. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about drinking water, the number of pigs in the country, how many pigs we should produce and retirement age and taxation.\u201d<\/p>\n
At first glance, any coalition seems unwieldy. Denmark\u2019s system has been steadily fragmenting over the past decade, with new, smaller parties vying for seats in Parliament, drawing away votes from the traditional parties.<\/p>\n
\u201cAtomization is the very clear trend,\u201d said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a research institute in Brussels.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut, fundamentally, the irony is that on most of the big things in society \u2014 even the big foreign policy issues \u2014 all these parties more or less agree,\u201d he added. \u201cSo they end up fighting over provincial things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Experts said this is happening across Europe, where special-interest parties are pulling support away from mainstream establishment parties and fracturing the political landscape.<\/p>\n
In Belgium and the Netherlands, for instance, more than a dozen parties are represented in their governing bodies. In Britain, a strong right-wing party, Reform UK, has been boosted in recent months by defections from the Tories.<\/p>\n
But the right-left power dynamic in Denmark hasn\u2019t changed significantly, which is why Ms. Frederiksen still has the best chance to lead the government.<\/p>\n
Denmark is a place where many people support high taxes and a big state. That was reflected on Tuesday, when parties on the left won more seats than parties on the right. But it was clear that Ms. Frederiksen herself had lost a bit of her mojo.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s very unpopular,\u201d Dr. Kirkegaard said.<\/p>\n
He said that the same characteristics that played so well on the international stage, such as being steadfast, forceful and outspoken, didn\u2019t play so well at home.<\/p>\n
\u201cDomestically, she\u2019s viewed as a bully and essentially arrogant,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was kind of hoping that Greenland would take focus away from that,\u201d he added. \u201cBut, fundamentally, because there are no pressing problems, this was an election that was really a very provincial election, actually, really fought on very narrow, local issues.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It wasn\u2019t about Greenland. Or Trump. Or NATO. It was about drinking water, taxes and pigs. In the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[37708,27,26,28958,4930,10572,57,1583,36822,10571,37706,31963,35752,16842,37707,27319,75,31966,9764],"class_list":["post-69042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-denmark","tag-agriculture-and-farming","tag-danmark","tag-denmark","tag-donald-j","tag-elections","tag-frederiksen","tag-greenland","tag-international-relations","tag-legislatures-and-parliaments","tag-mette","tag-pigs","tag-politics-and-government","tag-polls-and-public-opinion","tag-social-democratic-party-denmark","tag-taxation","tag-territorial-disputes","tag-trump","tag-united-states-international-relations","tag-water"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116473752918610333","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69042","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=69042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}