On November 1st, Denmark voted for a new parliament. However, this election has been more entertaining and certainly more chaotic than most.
The (new) parties
This year, there were 14 parties fighting to get the 175 seats in the Danish parliament (there are actually 179 seats, but of the last 4, 2 are elected in Greenland and 2 on the Faroe Islands - more on that later). Of these 14 parties, an extraordinarily high amount was new, which meant no-one knew for sure how popular they would be. The parties usually sort themselves on a left-right scale, with 6 on the left (called red bloc) and 7 on the right (called blue bloc).
Let’s take a quick introduction to the parties, but for the sake of simplicity only focus on the four most important players this evening. Starting from the left we have:
Social Democrats
· - Middle-left
· - The party of the current prime minister
· - Likes the idea of a broad coalition government with both left- and right-wing parties.
The moderates
· - Middle party
· - New party made by a former prime minister who used to belong to the party ‘Left’
· - Wants to be in the middle and make a broad coalition government
Left
· - Despite the name, the party is middle-right
· - One of the two main prime minister parties
· - Wants blue prime minister
Conservative
· - Right-wing party
· - The amount of support this election has varied a lot
· - This election they also had a prime minister candidate
· - Wants blue prime minister
The lines being drawn
Normally, it is more or less known that if the left gets more votes, the prime minister will come from the Social Democrats and if it is the right that gets the mandates, the prime minister will be from Left. However, this year was not as certain.
First, the blue bloc had not one but two prime minister candidates, so even with a blue majority, there was still uncertainty about which party would get the post and form the government. But, all right-wing parties had a right-wing government as their preferred one.
Second, even if the red bloc got enough mandates, it was not certain that the government would be left-wing. Even though almost all the left-wing parties wanted a left-wing government, the Social Democrats, the biggest of the left-wing parties - who also has the prime minister candidate - had said that they would like to make a broad coalition government.
Third, we have the party The Moderates, placed between the Social Democrats and the Left. This party did not want to explicitly support one or the other side, and was therefore the joker of the election, especially as the polls predicted no one would get the majority without them.
The election
With the exception of the Faroe Islands, the election took place on November 1st (the Faroe Islands held their election earlier as November 1st 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.
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