The Danish Social Democratic Party suffered a major setback in the municipal elections held this Tuesday. The party led by Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen remained the most voted force in the entire Scandinavian country, with almost a quarter of the votes, but lost, for the first time in more than 100 years, the mayor of Copenhagen. The capital’s city council will be led by the Green Left, which won the necessary support on Wednesday with a broad pact that excludes the Social Democrats.
The electoral coup by Frederiksen, in office since 2019 and considered one of the most influential figures of European social democracy, comes less than a year before the legislative elections. Danish media described the Social Democrats’ result in the local elections as a “total humiliation”, a “catastrophe” and a “sinking”.
Although the SPD remains the country’s leading force, with 23.2% of the vote, the result represents a drop of almost five percentage points compared to 2021. It however retains the mayors of Aarhus, Odense and Aalborg, the most populous cities after Copenhagen. However, for the first time in almost two decades, it will not have representation in all the municipalities of the country, the municipalities of Fano and Laeso being excluded.
“This is, without a doubt, a protest vote and a personal defeat for Frederiksen,” political analyst Henrik Qvortrup told Reuters. “The days of the Social Democrats as a great unifying party that encompassed both urban and rural areas are coming to an end. I believe this marks the beginning of a deeper crisis,” Qvortrup said.
In the capital, the Social Democrats, led by Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil, obtained only 12.7% of the votes, far behind the Red-Green Alliance, which won the elections with 22.1% of the votes, and the Green Left (17.9%).
The exclusion of the Social Democrats from this Wednesday’s brief negotiations for the formation of the new government in the Danish capital was predictable. Rosenkrantz-Theil, a former deputy of the Red-Green Alliance, did not spare personal attacks during the election campaign and assured that she would not support a mayor from other left-wing forces.
Rosenkrantz-Theil, who heads the ministries of Education, Housing and Social Affairs, was chosen a year ago by Frederiksen to replace Copenhagen’s then mayor, Sophie Haestorp Andersen, as a candidate in this Tuesday’s municipal elections. “We were counting on going back, but it seems that the decline is greater than we had calculated and this is not satisfactory,” the prime minister admitted shortly after Rosenkrantz-Theil’s defeat.
In the main Danish cities, the vote has shifted to the left, driven, according to most analysts, by the increase in the cost of living, especially housing, and by the perception of a worsening of social services. Some analysts argue that the harsh immigration and integration policies promoted by Frederiksen have also penalized the Social Democrats in Copenhagen.
In rural areas, however, the shift has been to the right. The Danish People’s Party and the Danish Democrats, two far-right and populist groups, have benefited from the unrest generated by restrictions resulting from new environmental regulations and the proliferation of wind and solar farms. “Many voters in rural areas simply don’t believe in the climate agenda,” Qvortrup sums up.
Frederiksen, who, after the 2022 legislative elections, chose to form a government with the liberals and centrists of the Moderate Party, instead of their traditional center-left allies, thus putting an end to the bloc politics that had governed Danish politics for more than four decades, ruled out that this decision was “a mistake” that had had heavy consequences on them. The leaders of the three parties in the Executive say that their intention is to maintain the governing coalition after next year’s elections. However, the result of the municipal elections and recent polls could lead to a change in strategy. “The idea of a centrist government is dead,” Bent Winther, a political analyst for the liberal newspaper, stressed on Wednesday. Berlingske.
