Danish PM’s leftwing bloc wins most votes but fails to secure majority – Europe live

… and on that note, it’s a wrap for today!

• Denmark’s left-wing bloc headed by Social Democrat prime minister Mette Frederiksen won Denmark’s general election but failed to secure a majority (00:28).

• The “red bloc” secured 84 seats in the new parliament, as the “blue bloc” got 77 seats, both short of the 90 seats required for majority.

• Former prime minister and current foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the leader of the non-aligned centre-right Moderates, has emerged as the likely kingmaker with 14 seats which will probably decide the next administration (12:43, 20:37, 22:40, 23:26, 23:45).

• Denmark now faces weeks of coalition talks, but the outgoing defence minister and Liberal Party’s leader Troels Lund Poulsen appeared to rule out the continuation of the current three-party arrangement (00:22).

We will be back in the morning for more reactions as the dust begins to settle on today’s hectic election day.

But for now, good night!

If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com.

I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.

in Copenhagen

Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democrats and Denmark’s other left-leaning parties appear to have failed to win enough votes to gain a clear mandate to form a government in an election fought amid geopolitical tensions with the US over Greenland.

With 99% of the vote counted late on Tuesday night, the prime minister’s party looked to have won the most votes but performed worse than expected, with nearly 22% of the vote, leaving the Social Democrats and the other left-leaning parties that form the “red bloc” with 84 seats, short of a majority in the 179-seat parliament.

But the right-leaning parties of the “blue bloc” also fell short, with 77 seats, putting the foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the leader of the non-aligned centre-right Moderates, in the spotlight as kingmaker with 14 seats.

Denmark now faces weeks of coalition talks, after which another centrist coalition appears likely to emerge.

Having reportedly spent much of the night smoking his pipe, Rasmussen emerged at the Moderates party late into the night to give a speech to jubilant supporters.

He urged Frederiksen and Troels Lund Poulsen, the leader of Denmark’s Liberal party, with whom he has been in coalition for more than three years, to “come down from the trees” and join him in the centre ground.

“What is clear – with all conceivable reservations – I think is that there is no red majority to the left of us, and there is no black-blue majority to the right of us,” he said to cheers.

We now have the final results with 100% counted, but we are yet to hear from the prime minister, Mette Frederiksen.

Here is the final set of results:

Social Democrats (S, A) 21.9% (38 seats)
Green Left (SF, F) 11.6% (20)
Liberal Party (V) 10.1% (18)
Liberal Alliance (I) 9.4% (16)
Danish People’s Party (DF, O) 9.1% (16)
Moderates (M) 7.7% (14)
Conservative People’s Party (DKF, C) 7.6% (13)
Red-Green Alliance (Ø) 6.3% (11)
Denmark Democrats (AE) 5.8% (10)
Danish Social Liberal Party (RV, B) 5.8% (10)
The Alternative 2.6% (5)
Citizen’s Party 2.1% (4)

… which translates to 84 seats for the “red bloc” and 77 seats for the “blue bloc” – so no overall majority – and 14 for Moderates in the middle.

The voter turnout was 83.7%.

Oh-oh.

The Liberal Party’s Troels Lund Poulsen goes all in as he says he wants to see a blue government as he appears to rule out another link up with Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democrats.

Remember, he is still the defence minister in the outgoing administration.

“I think we should form a blue center-right government. Otherwise, the Liberal Party will go into opposition,” he says.

If he stands by his comments tomorrow morning when the dust settles, this will make the coalition talks a lot trickier.

We are likely to see long weeks of discussions before a new government can be formed.

With less than 10 minutes until midnight in Denmark, 99% votes have now been counted.

Here are the latest numbers, via DR:

Social Democrats (S, A) 21.9% (38 seats)
Green Left (SF, F) 11.6% (20)
Liberal Party (V) 10.1% (18)
Liberal Alliance (I) 9.4% (16)
Danish People’s Party (DF, O) 9.1% (16)
Moderates (M) 7.7% (14)
Conservative People’s Party (DKF, C) 7.6% (13)
Red-Green Alliance (Ø) 6.3% (11)
Denmark Democrats (AE) 5.8% (10)
Danish Social Liberal Party (RV, B) 5.8% (10)
The Alternative 2.6% (5)
Citizen’s Party 2.1% (4)

Twelve parties will enter the next parliament.

That puts the “red bloc” at 84 seats in the new parliament, and the “blue bloc” at 77, with 14 seats for the Moderates, who will play a key role in deciding a new majority.

As discussed earlier, there will also be four MPs for Greenland and the Faroe Islands (two each).

Lars Løkke Rasmussen is now speaking, celebrating his party’s result in the election.

He says there have been “ups and downs” and that he does not even have a speech ready for the occassion, as you never know how things will go.

But he is clearly very pleased with the outcome, saying his party proved there is appetite for moderate, centrist voices.

He says it was a confusing election campaign, with so much focus on domestic politics against the backdrop of the US-Israeli attack on Iran.

He says his focus in coalition talks will be on issues, not on personalities and top jobs, and that will drive his considerations in discussions.

He says the other two parties of the outgoing government “ran to corners” to mobilise voters around their polarising proposals and issues, but now they will need to come back to “the middle” for talks about what’s next.

We will need days and weeks to see what that means in practice.

(via DR, TV2)

in Copenhagen

One of the surprise issues of the election was the treatment of Denmark’s pigs, earning the nickname “svinevalg“ (pig election).

Per capita, Denmark is the world’s most intensive pig-producing country, creating 30 million pigs per year (the equivalent of around five pigs per person a year).

Greenpeace said the election has shown there is a movement demanding Danish agriculture to change, citing systemic abuse to pigs, drinking water pollution and damage to fjords.

Christian Fromberg, political campaign lead at Greenpeace Denmark, said:

“This election could be a turning point, with broad implications for the industrial livestock industry even beyond Denmark’s borders. Across the country people are demanding change – it’s now up to the incoming government to listen.”

Just a quick update as the vote count progresses.

With 85.8% of the votes now counted, the latest DR projection shows the red bloc at 82 seats, the blue bloc at 79, and the Moderates at 14.

in Copenhagen

The son of the Moderates leader Lars Løkke Rasmussen has said he believes his father is “cautiously optimistic”.

Bergur Løkke Rasmussen told DR:

“I think he is cautiously optimistic that it will be right, and that we as a party will be allowed to take on the role that we would very much like to have, namely a government across the middle.”

in Copenhagen

At the far-right Danish People’s Party’s election party, inside a marquee in the courtyard at Christiansborg, a DJ was playing relentlessly high tempo music while party supporters and candidates – watched by journalists – circulated under a disco ball.

Among them was candidate Mikkel Hartwich who I met yesterday when he was out campaigning in Kokkedal.

He was delighted by the exit polls, which put the party at triple the support they had last election, but was less impressed with the suggestion of working with Moderates leader Lars Løkke Rasmussen, who he said “I don’t trust”.

He put his party’s projected rise in support down to people being “tired of the bullshit,” which he defines as immigrants and the treatment of old people.

The first electoral projection by DR broadcaster appears to suggest some early changes compared to the earlier exit poll as we get more and more actual results.

While Frederiksen’s Social Democrats are still ahead, revised upwards to 21.3% of the vote share, it is the conservative blue bloc that is now projected to get more seats in the next parliament – 83 to 79.

This comes on the back of two significant upward revisions for the Danish people’s Party – to 9.6% – and for the Liberal Party, to 10.6%.

But, but, but that still means there is no overall majority, it’ll still fall down to the Moderates, with 13 seats, to decide the next government, it seems.

Usual caveats apply, expect these numbers to keep changing in the next few hour.

The far-right Danish People’s Party is one of the winners of the night, as it almost tripled its vote share to between 7.5 to 7.7%, according to the two exit polls.

But it’s worth remembering that their reference point is so low because they had a particularly disastrous result in 2022 – just 2.6%.

They are now back just below the level of support they recorded in 2019 (8.7%).

in Copenhagen

Official results are expected later on Tuesday or early on Wednesday.

But Denmark now faces weeks of coalition talks, after which another centrist coalition or a centre-right coalition appears likely to emerge.

Despite technically coming first, this is a tricky result for Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democrats – their lowest vote share since 1901 or 1903, and significantly lower than in 2022.

There is still a path for Frederiksen to retain the post of the prime minister, but involves a lot of negotiations and getting a deal with Lars Løkke Rasmussen and his Moderates.

TV2 exit poll:

Social Democrats (S, A) 21%
Green Left (SF, F) 12.5%
Liberal Alliance (I) 10%
Liberal Party (V) 9%
Moderates (M) 7.9%
Danish People’s Party (DF, O) 7.7%
Conservative People’s Party (DKF, C) 7.5%
Red-Green Alliance (Ø) 6.7%
Denmark Democrats (AE) 6.5%
Danish Social Liberal Party (RV, B) 5.4%
The Alternative 3.3%
Citizen’s Party 2.3%

The exit poll gives the “red block” 86 seats in the Folketing, and the “blue block” 75 seats – meaning the Moderates, with 14, could decide the majority.

The left and right wing blocs failed to get a majority, according to exit polls (20:08, 20:13), with Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democrats set to have worst performance since 1901, leaving Lars Løkke Rasmussen and his Moderates in the position of kingmaker.

DR exit poll:

Social Democrats (S, A) 19.2%
Green Left (SF, F) 11.4%
Liberal Alliance (I) 10.5%
Liberal Party (V) 9.3%
Moderates (M) 8.2%
Denmark Democrats (AE) 7.8%
Danish People’s Party (DF, O) 7.5%
Conservative People’s Party (DKF, C) 7.1%
Red-Green Alliance (Ø) 6.4%
Danish Social Liberal Party (RV, B) 6.0%
The Alternative 4.1%
Citizen’s Party 2.1%

These numbers suggest 83 seats for the “red block” and 78 for the “blue block” – and 14 seats for the Moderates.

in Copenhagen

The atmosphere is building at Christiansborg, where several of the parties are having their election night events.

The music is on at the right-wing Danish Democrats party and at the Social Democrats, where red roses are arranged on tables, musicians have been tuning up. The Danish People’s Party’s party is in the courtyard.

Less than hour to go now until polls close and the arrival of those fateful exit polls.

It’s 45 minutes to go before the polls close!

We will bring you all the latest here.

in Copenhagen

Mette Frederiksen has refused to be drawn on whether she would form a left-wing government – even if they get a majority.

“I still meet Danes who say that they are not Social Democrats but say that I have done well as prime minister,” the prime minister told TV2. But added that this was “not enough to ensure that we can continue.”

Asked whether she could guarantee that if the so-called “red” bloc parties got a majority after the election there would also be a red government, she did not give a direct answer.

She said:

“Everything depends of course on the political content. It is important that we hold on to a government that can manoeuvre in an uncertain world.”

There are no excuses for not voting today!

Danish minister for children and education Mattias Tesfaye had to have a difficult chat with his dog, Mango, after the pet snacked on his poll card.

But Berlingske helpfully says that he will still be able vote even without the card…

Greenland’s prime minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen told AFP that Denmark’s general election was the most important in the history of the Danish autonomous territory coveted by US president Donald Trump.

As polls opened in Greenland’s capital Nuuk, prime minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen, of the centre-right Democrats party, stressed that the territory still found itself in a “serious situation”.

“I think it’s the most important election for the Danish parliament in Greenland in history.”

“We are in a time where we have a superpower trying to acquire us, take us, control us,” Nielsen told AFP.

in Copenhagen

The far-right Danish People’s Party (DPP) is attempting to win over voters by paying for their petrol.

For three hours this morning, the petrol station Go’on lowered its petrol prices by 3.35 DKK and diesel prices by 2.25 DKK in a campaign funded by the party, leading to queues in several places in Denmark.

But Go’on CEO Mick Kjær told DR that there was an upper limit to the deal (although he declined to say what the agreed limit was), with the company paying anything above that.

The DPP has made fuel prices a central issue in their election campaign.

Kjær denied publicly supporting the party, telling the broadcaster:

“We would like to contribute to the debate about fuel prices, but we do not really have a desire to be party political.”

Meanwhile, the Danish media picked up the recent comments by US Air Force Gen Gregory Guillot who told US lawmakers that the US and Denmark were negotiating broader US access to military bases on Greenland.

“What we have now is access to Pituffik airbase, which is at the northern part of Greenland, which gives us some of the fighter and tanker capability and a lot of space capability, but we don’t have a permanent presence for [special operation forces] and then we don’t have a permanent presence for some of the maritime capabilities that I need,” Guillot told US senators.

In his comments, originally made late last week, but only picked up by the Danish press today, Guillot said that the talks with Denmark were “very productive” and responding to “very real” need on the US part.

He said that Denmark was “very, very supportive” of expanding the access under the 1951 defence agreement with the US.

And the voting is now under way in Greenland too, which is three hours behind Copenhagen.

Understandably, there has been a lot of focus on the semiautonomous territory in recent months as US president Donald Trump repeatedly expressed his (not so subtle) interest in controlling it.

There are some 70 polling stations, and two seats in the Folketing are up for grabs, with both incumbents not standing for re-election, Greenlandic media outlet Sermitsiaq said.

Meanwhile, Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen is out campaigning this morning too and she is in Aalborg, meeting some Greenlandic voters.

in Copenhagen

Usually Danish political coalitions are formed of “red” and “blue” blocs.

The red, left-wing parties being the Social Democrats (Socialdemokratiet), the Danish Social Liberal Party (Radikale Venstre), Green Left (Socialistisk Folkeparti or SF) and the Red-Green Alliance (Enhedslisten), and the blue, right-wing parties being Venstre (Denmark’s Liberal party), the Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti), the Conservative People’s Party (Det Konservative Folkeparti), Liberal Alliance and Nye Borgerlige (New Right).

But after the last election, in 2022, the Social Democrats, the then newly formed centre-right Moderates and conservative Denmark’s Liberal Party broke with convention to form a centrist government.

This time around, most of the red bloc are hoping for a traditional red coalition to put forward a strong left-wing agenda.

But with the polls looking so tight, the Moderates are expected to play a decisive “kingmaker” role in negotiations depending on who they are willing to go into partnership with.

And at the 11th hour, Moderates leader Lars Løkke Rasmussen, has appointed himself “royal investigator” – the role that is usually held by the person who goes on to become PM and who looks into whether a government can be formed.

Rasmussen, who has twice been Denmark’s prime minister and is currently the foreign minister, told Politiken in an interview published last night:

“I am not a candidate for prime minister, but I would like to be the one who negotiates a government basis for a government across the middle. Not to form a government, but to investigate whether a government basis can be created. Therefore, I am announcing myself as a royal investigator if we in the Moderates have the decisive votes.”

in Kokkedal

Mayasa Mandia, a recent graduate living in the small Danish town of Kokkedal, will be voting for the left in Tuesday’s general election – but it won’t be for Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democrats.

The 23-year-old, a practising Muslim, says that under Frederiksen’s government far-right commentary has become normalised in the Danish mainstream. She has seen this, she says, at her own university, where there were discussions about banning prayers.

“There are more important issues to talk about than the skin tone of someone or whether or not they wear a scarf on their head and whether that scarf is reflective of our Danish values or not,” said Mandia.

But, under Frederiksen’s centrist coalition, anti-immigrant rhetoric and Islamophobia have become increasingly commonplace in Danish politics, she feels.

Unusually in a continent where far-right forces are making unprecedented inroads, polling for the anti-immigration Danish People’s party (DPP) is relatively low – the party is forecast to garner about 7.5% of the vote, with smaller parties of a similar bent predicted to pick up a further 9%. Many feel that is not because their ideas have been vanquished, but because they have been co-opted by Frederiksen’s centre-left.

The prime minister’s hardline immigration policies – she came into government in 2019 saying she wanted to cut asylum seeker numbers to zero – have attracted global attention and inspired similar approaches across Europe, including in Sweden and, more recently, the UK.

Domestically they have been stalling the growth of the far right, while at the same time pulling rightwing rhetoric and extremist ideas leftward into the mainstream, say analysts.

in Copenhagen

Good morning from Copenhagen where I have just bumped into Pelle Dragsted, the leader of Enhedslisten – the Red-Green Alliance – high-fiving and waving at passing commuters on bicycles. The recently elected Copenhagen Lord Mayor, Sisse Marie Welling, from the SF party also just cycled by.

After a short but intense election period, Denmark goes to the polls today in what is expected to be a very tight election.

The Social Democrats’ Mette Frederiksen is largely predicted to remain prime minister, but it is not guaranteed – with the Moderates’ Lars Løkke Rasmussen expected to be in pole position to be a kingmaker in coalition talks.

The 12 leaders were debating on television late into the night last night.

The election has been dominated by domestic issues like animal welfare, drinking water, further tightening immigration and the cost of living in front of the back drop of geopolitical issues – not least the crisis with the US in January when Donald Trump threatened to invade Greenland, which is part of the Danish kingdom.

Dragsted told me the election is “about Danish daily life of citizens but it’s also an election of what’s going on in the world.

“We have a clash of authoritarian forces one side and we are having a lot of important elections in coming years that will define the future of Europe. Our election is part of that clash.”

He added: “For me it’s so important what message we will send to Europe and the world tonight.”

After votes in France, Germany, Italy, Slovenia over the weekend, it’s now time for Denmark, as Danes go to the polls today amid the backdrop of (waves arms) everything, everywhere, all at once.

As our Nordic correspondent Miranda Bryant explains, the incumbent, Mette Frederiksen, has been widely predicted to continue as prime minister after the election.

Earlier this year, her party recorded a “Greenland bump” after dealing with US president Donald Trump’s threats aimed at the semiautonomous territory, but the campaign was dominated by domestic issues.

And it’s all very tight.

The last Verian poll, published on Monday, predicted that neither the red nor the blue bloc would be able to form a majority without the Moderates, putting the Moderates leader, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, in the position of kingmaker.

Miranda is on the ground in Copenhagen and she will keep us posted on the main stories and the colour of the election day in Denmark.

The polls close 8pm local time (7pm UK) and we will have exit polls and immediate reactions for you on the blog.

It’s Tuesday, 24 March 2026, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live.

Good morning.