The center is gaining momentum in Denmark: a new populist party no longer wants to choose between the left or the right | Abroad

Danes have to go to the polls a year early. Social Democratic Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called an early election after the left-wing Radical Liberal Party, which backed Frederiksen’s minority government, threatened a vote of no confidence. The party did so after a report criticizing the government’s decision to kill 17 million mink in the Corona crisis.

What distinguishes the election campaign is that the composition of the traditional left-right bloc in the Scandinavian country is called into question. Traditionally, either the left-wing red bloc or the blue bloc of right-wing parties makes up the government. This often happened in the form of a minority government with the support of other parties from the bloc.

But this time, Frederiksen argues in favor of a broad coalition separate from the bloc’s formation. Other party leaders rejected this idea. It essentially seemed to be an attempt by the outgoing prime minister to make it clear to others in the left-wing bloc that she did not want to accept all of their demands.

However, the path of the Broad Center Alliance did not disappear. After all, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, prime minister for the liberal Fenster party in 2009-2011 and 2015-2019, wants to work on this. He has made a sharp rise in the polls in recent weeks with his new centrist party, Moderaterne (Moderates). He can win more than 11% of the vote.

He may be able to decide which government Denmark will take over. The right-wing opposition bloc led by Jacob Ellmann Jensen of the Liberal Party was said to have lost 41.3 percent of the vote, according to opinion polls. The proportion of the various left-wing parties combined is 47.2 percent.

A total of fourteen parties are vying today, three more than in 2019, for 179 seats in Parliament. There is an electoral threshold of 2 per cent in Denmark.