Earlier this year, Social Democratic Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was riding a modest “Greenland bounce” due to the tense stand-off with Donald Trump over Greenland. While this may have prompted her to call a snap election to save her flagging mandate, it is domestic politics that have defined the campaign, and with more than a dozen parties in the mix, the outcome is far from clear.
The results may also mark an end of Denmark’s traditional bloc politics. Since the 2022 election, Denmark has been governed by an unusual “over-the-centre” grand coalition between the Social Democrats, the liberal Venstre, and the centrist Moderates. This arrangement broke with decades of political custom, as Frederiksen chose to govern alongside her traditional rivals despite having a nominal left-wing majority available. The result has been a – predictably – uneasy and often unpopular government, caught between ideological compromise and a restless electorate.
Political Polarization
If Frederiksen’s centrist experiment was intended to stabilize Danish politics, it failed, and the polarization of Danish politics has continued to intensify. The governing coalition has overseen a noticeable rightward shift on economic, social, and migration issues – including the abolition of a popular national holiday to fund weapons for Ukraine – and this has come at a political cost. In the November 2025 local elections, both the Social Democrats and Venstre suffered heavy losses, while the Moderates nearly collapsed entirely.
The Social Democrats’ loss of control of Copenhagen – its treasured stronghold for over a century – underscored the depth of the disaster. A fragmented and polarized political landscape emerged. While the government parties experienced a drubbing, gains were made by the green-left Socialist People’s Party (SF), the right-libertarian Liberal Alliance (LA), and the two main parties of the far right, the Denmark Democrats (DD) and the Danish People’s Party (DF).
Both Sides of the Fence
Rather than interpreting these results as a signal to shift clearly left or right, Frederiksen seems to be trying to do both at the same time. On the one hand, her government has doubled down on already strict (and to many critics simply racist) migration and integration policies, that have garnered Frederiksen praise from social democrats – and others further to the right – internationally who wish to emulate her rightward tack on migration. On the other, it has made a clear left turn on material issues, placing more traditionally left-wing economic rhetoric and policy promises at the heart of the election campaign.
Read the full article at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - Brussels Office.
