Mette Frederiksen has admitted that a fall in support for the Social Democrats was “greater than we had expected” after her party suffered sweeping defeats across Denmark and lost control of Copenhagen for the first time in more than 100 years.
While the Social Democrats remain the largest municipal party in Denmark, the prime minister’s centre-left party lost more than five percentage points across the country in Tuesday night’s municipal and regional elections, dropping from 28.4% in 2021 to 23.2%. Support for the far-right Danish People’s party, meanwhile, rose slightly from 4.09% to 5.9%.
In Copenhagen, Frederiksen’s close personal friend, Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil, who is understood to have been handpicked by the prime minister to run for lord mayor in the Danish capital, failed to get the votes she needed.
The position of lord mayor, it was announced, will be held by Sisse Marie Welling from the Green Left (Socialistisk Folkeparti, known as SF), which won 17.9% of the vote. “We have written history at city hall,” she said. The Red-Green Alliance (Enhedslisten) remained the capital’s biggest party with 22.1% of the vote.
Looking disconsolate after the historic defeat, Frederiksen said: “We had expected to go back, but it seems that the decline is greater than we had expected. We will consider what is behind this.”
Frederiksen cited rising food prices, and an imbalance between rural and urban areas, for her party’s decline in popularity. She also pointed to crime committed by “people coming from outside”, reinforcing her hardline stance on immigration.
As well as Copenhagen, the Social Democrats also took hits in the former dependable municipalities of Frederikshavn, Køge, Fredericia, Gladsaxe and Holstebro.
While the left did not do as well as expected in Copenhagen – there were hopes of a landslide – the results mean that for the first time since 1938, when the current system was introduced, the city will not have a Social Democrat lord mayor.
Conceding defeat on Wednesday morning, Rosenkrantz-Theil, who co-owns a summer house with the prime minister, said she would not be lord mayor after support for her party dropped from 17.2% of the vote in 2021 to 12.7%.
“I gave it the chance we needed,” she said. “Copenhagen is worth fighting for, and I knew from the start that I was taking a big risk. I wasn’t invited and wasn’t allowed in.”
Among the reasons cited by analysts for the Social Democrats’ decline in Copenhagen were voter fatigue over the prime minister’s hardline policies on issues such as integration and immigration, which have partly inspired a newly unveiled asylum and migration policy in Britain.
Nationally, Peter Thisted Dinesen, a political science professor at the University of Copenhagen, said it was a “big loss for the Social Democrats across the whole party”.
He added: “This is very hurtful for the party losing several key bastions including Copenhagen. Frederiksen is unlikely to be threatened while being prime minister, but it will clearly prompt analyses and discussions of the causes.
“Otherwise: wins for the Socialist People’s party (SF) and Liberal Alliance (LA) and the Denmark Democrats (the Dd, first time running in local elections). Venstre (V) and Conservatives lost votes but gained in terms of mayorships.”
