The election

With the exception of the Faroe Islands, the election took place on November 1^st (the Faroe Islands held their election earlier as November 1^st is a day to mourn those who died at sea). And as the votes were counted during the evening, the drama began to unfold.

At first, the polls predicting that neither the left (red bloc) or right (blue bloc) got a clear majority without The Moderates held true. The red bloc looked to get 80-something mandates and the blue bloc 70-something out of 175, with the Moderates getting the remaining mandates. As 90 is the magical number in Danish politics, it seemed evident that The Moderates would have most of the bargaining power. However, as more votes got counted, the mandates slowly shifted in favour of the left wing. In order to avoid the Moderates having the main bargaining power, the left-wing needed 87 votes. Why 87 and not 90, you might ask? See, this is where the Faroese and Greenlandic votes (commonly called the North-Atlantic votes) come into the picture.

As earlier mentioned, the Faroe Islands and Greenland have two mandates each. These are elected separately, and the point of having them is to make sure those territories have representation in the Danish parliament. The Faroe Islands’ candidates had already been elected, and one mandate went to the red bloc and one to the blue. The Greenlandic hadn’t been counted, but both mandates have gone to the red bloc since 1998, so it was assumed it would happen in this election as well. Therefore, only 87 mandates were needed in the election in Denmark to get a red left-wing majority.

Denmark has two main tv channels that both covered the election. This made things very interesting, as, during a large part of the night, their prognoses were different. One channel predicted the necessary 87 mandates for the red bloc, while the other kept it at 86. It was only when the very last percentage of votes were counted that the actual results were confirmed. The red bloc just managed to get the needed 87 mandates, and as the Greenlandic election turned out as anticipated, the red bloc will be able to get the smallest possible majority and making the Moderates potentially unnecessary - much to the disappointment of the blue bloc, who, combined with the Moderates, actually got about 60.000 more votes than the red bloc.

Now, all we can do is wait while the parties, left by the Social Democrats, bargain about how the new government actually will turn out. If it will be purely red, if it will be the much-discussed broad middle coalition, or something completely different.