Danish Elections and Politics

[Diouf]

Now that a new government (Social Democrats - Liberals - Moderates) have been formed, I'm starting this new thread to cover the political events in Denmark until the next election.

The first poll after the government formation by Voxmeter, has all three government parties a bit below their election result. The Social Liberals, who aren't opposing the government, is also down further after their chaotic weeks, and their late decision not to participate in the cabinet. The five largest opposition parties all make progress.

https://twitter.com/Annamidtgaard/status/1604759043704242177



Danish Elections and Politics 2019-2022: https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=327629
Danish General Election 1 November 2022: https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=524325.0

[Diouf]

We shall have four Danish liberal parties in Renew Europe after next elections?

And perhaps another EU commissioner.

In terms of the four parties, Liberals should at least be a certain one.
Renew would be the very obvious group for the Moderates to join. They will probably run together with the Social Liberals in that election. Based on the 2022 election results, such an alliance should be able to get two seats again, like the Social Liberals got in 2019.
Liberal Alliance also looks good for a seat based on their current status. Previously, they had some meeting with AECR, and might have joined that group back when the UK Conservatives played the main role and the Liberal Alliance were more Euro-sceptic. The party have since swung back towards a more EU-positive direction, and in 2019 ran in an electoral alliance with government partners Liberals and Conservatives. So Renew seems like the likely destination for them now.

[Diouf]

DPP leader Morten Messerschmidt has been acquitted of all charges in the re-trial of his EU fraud case in the Lower Court! Back in August 2021, he was found guilty and received a suspended sentence of six months. However, that sentence was later annulled due to the judge being explicitly biased in the case with FB-likes + comments, critical of Messerschmidt before and after the ruling. A number of the critical posts liked was written by his friend, the increasingly nutty former Liberal Minister Søren Pind.

So the case had to be re-trialled in the Lower Court, where he was today acquitted of all charges. The prosecutor hasn't yet decided whether to appeal the case to the Higher Court.

The case has played a significant part in the conflicts around DPP. The case started back in October 2015 when a fellow DPP MEP Rikke Karlsson left the party in protest as Messerschmidt wouldn't provide her with information about the use of EU funds. The case started to roll, and there were long investigations by first OLAF and then the Danish Fraud Squad, which in the end let to the state prosecutor running the case. The case gave DPP the first hit in the polls in 2015 after the party had boomed in the 2014 European Election and 2015 General Election, and then played a part in the power struggle in the DPP with Messerschmidt's position as heir apparent challenged, and him growing increasingly frustated by the leadership's handling of the case and lack of support for him.

[Diouf]

Pernille Vermund to step down

New Right party leader Pernille Vermund has announced that she is stepping down at her party's next conference. The next planned conference is in October, but the party board will decide whether to have an extraordinary conference before then.
Vermund also said that this will be her last term in parliament. She says she needs to get her ordinary life back, and that she's not a politician by trade, but that she has done what she had to do for her country in the past seven years.

She founded the party alongside Peter Seier Christensen in the autumn of 2015. In its first general election in 2019, the party crossed the threshold with 2.4% and 4 seats. During the most recent term, the party polled regularly up towards 8/9% and had a great local/regional election night in 2021, but lost some steam with the emergence of the Denmark Democrats. In the recent general election, they won 3.7% and 6 seats. Soon after the election, Mette Thiesen left the party (before being thrown out) after some personal issues with her violent boyfriend harrassing party staff.

The obvious replacement as party leader is Lars Boje Mathiesen. The Eastern Jutland MP has created a strong social media following, and was clearly the party's second-best performing MPs in the most recent election with 11 150 personal votes. He became a councillor in Aarhus for the Liberal Alliance at the 2013 election, defected to the New Right in 2016. He was one of the four MPs elected for the party in 2019, and then safely re-elected in 2022.
There are no other really good solutions in the parliamentary group. Peter Seier Christensen is very much an organisatorial, background figure, whom you rarely see in public statements. The newly elected Kim Edberg Andersen is more media friendly, but without parliamentary experience and a more recent convert from DPP. The best other option might be the 27-year old Mikkel Bjørn, who led the New Right Youth from 2016-2021.

[Diouf]

The government aims to ram through its decision to abolish a holiday, the Great Prayer Day, and is trying to force other parties to join it. The government published its bill yesterday, and gave an unusually short public hearing of only 7 days before the legislative proces in parliament starts. So far most of the opposition parties are sceptical of the proposal. The left-wing parties and trade unions are critical of worserning working conditions in this way and see it as something which should be dealt with in collective bargaining. So far the right-wing opposition has also been quite critical, with a significant added emphasis on the cultural significance of the Great Prayer Day.

The government hopes that its confused support-ish party Social Liberals will support the proposal. The party has itself proposed to abolish a holiday before, but would like to spend the revenue in other ways than the government. The government mainly aims to spend the money on increasing defence spending faster, while the Social Liberals want to increase climate and education spending.
The government then hopes to get support by tying the decision very close to the defence area. So Minister of Defense Jakob Ellemann said on Friday that parties need to support the abolishment of the holiday if they are to be part of the negotiations of a new defence settlement, where expenditure is to be raised quicker than currently agreed. So this particularly pressures Social Liberals, Conservatives and SPP, who are part of the current defence agreement.
So the government probably hopes in this way to push the Conservatives to accept it, and hope the Social Liberals do as well. And then maybe a party like the Liberal Alliance could end up in the negotiations as well. Several of the other opposition parties are attacking the new government for being so brute in pushing through this unpopular measure.

[JimJamUK]

The government then hopes to get support by tying the decision very close to the defence area. So Minister of Defense Jakob Ellemann said on Friday that parties need to support the abolishment of the holiday if they are to be part of the negotiations of a new defence settlement, where expenditure is to be raised quicker than currently agreed. So this particularly pressures Social Liberals, Conservatives and SPP, who are part of the current defence agreement.
So the government probably hopes in this way to push the Conservatives to accept it, and hope the Social Liberals do as well. And then maybe a party like the Liberal Alliance could end up in the negotiations as well. Several of the other opposition parties are attacking the new government for being so brute in pushing through this unpopular measure.

Didn’t Frederiksen talk about how she wanted broad agreements that include parties outside the government? ‘Vote with us on this policy or we won’t even talk to you about another agreement’ is hardly pragmatic, consensus seeking politics.

[Diouf]

The government then hopes to get support by tying the decision very close to the defence area. So Minister of Defense Jakob Ellemann said on Friday that parties need to support the abolishment of the holiday if they are to be part of the negotiations of a new defence settlement, where expenditure is to be raised quicker than currently agreed. So this particularly pressures Social Liberals, Conservatives and SPP, who are part of the current defence agreement.
So the government probably hopes in this way to push the Conservatives to accept it, and hope the Social Liberals do as well. And then maybe a party like the Liberal Alliance could end up in the negotiations as well. Several of the other opposition parties are attacking the new government for being so brute in pushing through this unpopular measure.

Didn’t Frederiksen talk about how she wanted broad agreements that include parties outside the government? ‘Vote with us on this policy or we won’t even talk to you about another agreement’ is hardly pragmatic, consensus seeking politics.

Yeah, it isn't the most inclusive and open start to the new government's term. But there's probably also the idea that they want this unpopular measure passed as quickly as possible to be able to focus on the more well-liked proposals. And if they just proposed it regularly, there might be no support at all, so they hope in this way to get some support. And their whole idea of mixing it with the defence issue, is to make the abolishment more acceptable to the public.

So far, it doesn't seem like the other parties are willing to play along. Today the party leaders of all nine other parties published a press release, where they reject the government's demand of agreeing to the abolishment of the Great Prayer Day in order to participate in defence negotiations. The Danish Trade Union Confederation also increased its rhetoric against the proposal. They called for the government to take back the proposal. If that doesn't happen, they want opposition parties to force a referendum on the issue (requires 60 seats). They also prepare a demonstration against the proposal.

Today the government proposed its working programme for the coming months, and so far it shows no signs of wanting to ditch the proposals.

https://twitter.com/Altingetdk/status/1615358096079224837

[Diouf]

Lars Boje Mathiesen has announced his candidature as leader of the New Right, and is being endorsed by fellow MPs Peter Seier Christensen and Kim Edberg Andersen. Pernille Vermund is not endorsing anyone as her replacement, so the only remaining MP not to endorse him is the one seen as the only other potential leader option, the newly elected Mikkel Bjørn.

Bjørn might be trying to gauge whether he has a real chance of challenging Boje Mathiesen, and whether he feels ready to be leader already. If he decides to run, it will widely be seen as an ideological battle between two significant strands in the party. Boje Mathiesen is seen as the protest option. He is seen as very anti-state, anti-power, and has gained a lot of popularity for his criticism of the covid restrictions (without verging into conspiracies). He has had an independent business (musician), and has railed against state bureaucracy and the way the public spends its money. He has several times made videoes where he meticiously goes through some parts of state/local government expenditure with focus on "silly spending".
Bjørn seems a more bookish, national conservative ideologue. He also sounds a bit more supportive of Vermund's attempt to unite the Blue parties in the recent term.

[Diouf]

New Flight

Today newly-elected MP Mikkel Bjørn Sørensen announced that he is leaving New Right and joining DPP. The decision at once decides the leadership race in the New Right, where Bjørn was seen as the only possible candidate to run against Lars Boje Mathiesen, but it also ensures that Boje will start out his leadership with a cratered party. The deadline to run as candidate for leader is tonight, but it seems unlikely that anyone will run against Boje now. Instead, there could be more on the way out. In addition to Bjørn himself, the leader and deputy leader of New Right Youth have also announced their departures.

Bjørn says that he doesn't trust Boje to lead the party. He says Boje is super competent, but "a solo rider", and that his style doesn't leave any room for compromise and constructive dialogue. Instead Boje takes up all the space and leaves the party and other persons far in the background. Bjørn also claims that Boje + the party's secretariat director threathened him with being excluded from the party if he didn't announce his support for Boje as leader. Boje rejects that version and says Bjørn was instead told that if he were not to respect the outcome of a leadership election, then he couldn't stay in the party.

The departing Youth party leaders made even tougher criticisms of Boje with one accusing him of "borderline tinfoil hatism", while another claimed his populist style sows mistrust to the country's foundational institutions and will isolate New Right from the other parties.

Bjørn says he is moving to DPP because they clearly show their nationalconservative values, and says the party has risen from the ashes admirably under a new leader. It seems likely that another New Right defector Mette Thiesen could soon join DPP as well.

While no one will likely run against Lars Boje as leader, there has been a candidate for deputy leader against Boje's preferred candidate, MP Kim Edberg Andersen. Vejle councillor Rune Bønnelykke, who is also a member of the party board, is running and says he hopes that by becoming deputy leader, he could ensure the party keeps both the liberal and the nationalconservative wing united.

[Diouf]

The government has reneged on its demand that parties have to vote for the abolishing the Great Prayer Day as a public holiday if they are to take part in defence negotiations. However, they still want to carry out their plans to abolish it. The first reading of the bill happened last Thursday, where 8 of the 9 opposition parties presented a common proposal to postpone the holiday removal to after the next election, so that the population gets a chance to have their say on this. The only opposition party not to join was the Social Liberals, and it seems like they are trying to see if they can get a good advantage from this. They can grant the government a very helpful hand if the government can carry out the law with more than just their own votes. The Social Liberals actually like the proposal in itself, and now they might be able to demand how some of the money are spent. Perhaps on some proposals on climate, education etc. And the more of the money, the Social Liberals can get to spend, the more there is a need for new, difficult economic reforms in the defence negotiations to finance the new expenses.
Today, the unions have arranged demonstrations against the proposal in front of parliament. 

[Mike88]

The government has reneged on its demand that parties have to vote for the abolishing the Great Prayer Day as a public holiday if they are to take part in defence negotiations.

There was a big rally this Sunday, 40,000-50,000 protesters, against this proposal in Copenhagen:

https://twitter.com/Lusa_noticias/status/1622343382591750145

Thousands demonstrate in Denmark against end of holiday to fund Defense.

[Diouf]

Mette Thiesen has now officially joined DPP. She was elected for New Right, but left the party before being thrown out just days after the election day. So the DPP - New Right seat tally is now 7-4, despite the election result being 5-6. Tomorrow, New Right will have their extraordinary party congress. Lars Boje Mathiesen has received more "conspiracy criticism" after statements about the World Economic Forum: "I think it will be very damaging if their influence continue to grow. I don't need a global shadow government. Are the policies goverments carry out, dictated or inspired by them? Fundamentally, the WEF influences the Danish elite, how they view society and where it should go. WEF has an elitist world view and one where citizens lose their freedom".

Liberal leader, Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister Jakob Ellemann-Jensen has gone on sick leave after a recent indisposition. Minister of Economy, Troels Lund Poulsen, will be temporary Minister of Defence, while Stephanie Lose, Regional chair of Southern Denmark region and deputy Liberal leader, will lead the party administrative side of things.

[Diouf]

Lars Boje Mathiesen officially the new leader of the New Right.

https://twitter.com/berlingske/status/1623041904882458624

Six candidates ran for deputy leader. The winner of that contest was Henriette Ergemann, Kalundborg councillor, who seem to be a loyal Boje supporter and delivered one of the more impressive local election results in 2021, when she led the party to 8.4% and therefore was elected already as the 5th of 27 councillors.

[Diouf]

The government has agreed an inflation assistance package worth 2.4 bln. DKK. The deal was made with the SPP, Denmark Democrats, Social Liberals, DPP, Alternative and New Right. Around half of the funds are spend on a 5 000 DKK additional cheque for all those receiving the "elderly cheque", which are the relatively poor off pensioners. A big chunk is also spend on postponing the date by which companies have to pay their taxes this summer, so the companies do not have to pay that amount on top of big energy bills. The deal also includes support for poor families, persons with high medicine costs, more funds to support transitions to disctrict heating plus support to grocery stores in less populated districts.

Conservatives and Liberal Alliance are not a part of the deal as they don't see a need for a package of this size with inflation numbers falling, and says it risks prolonging the inflation period. The Red-Green Alliance is not in the deal because of the way the support for poor families are set up. They wanted to extend the temporary support for poor families, which was introduced last year. However, in the new deal it's not yet agreed how the support for families will be structured, and several parties want to set it up in a way such that non-western immigrant families will have difficulties getting the support. Also the Red-Greens believe the government promised a bigger package of measures in the election.

[VPH]

What an interesting coalition on the inflation package. Kinda cool honestly.

[Diouf]

The internal troubles in New Right did not stop after the extraordinary congress and election of a new leadership. The new deputy leader, Henriette Ergemann, was revealed to be a full-blown conspiracy theorist during covid with Facebook posts about getting bleedings when near vaccinated people, believing politicians only got saltwater shots while the rest of the population got the dangerous real stuff, and making some tough attacks on prominent politicians. Ergemann has now resigned after only 13 days in the post. A new deputy leader will be elected at the ordinary congress in October.
The party has also excluded two members of its executive committee after the leadership deemed them  to be illoyal, and without the necessary respect for the party's institutions, etc. in relation to keeping confidentiality.

[Diouf]

Epinion for DR has polled the approval rating of all party leaders and members of the government.

In terms of the party leaders, there are some quite clear groups formed. Out in front are the two party leaders of the two most popular opposition parties, whose parties are trending upwards after great election results and are now routinely the 2nd and 3rd biggest parties in opinion polls. Then we have the two big beasts in the government, who are at around even with basically everyone having an opinion on them. Then, there's a set of four opposition leaders with overall disapproval in the teens with a decent chunk of support but also quite widespread dislike. Fatally, the government leader with the biggest trouble, Ellemann, is even further down at -17%. In the bottom, we have the leaders of three parties considered quite extreme, and whose leaders often make statements certain to enrage a large part of the voters.

Party leaders
+15%, Pia Olsen Dyhr, SPP, 43% approve, 28% disapprove
+14%, Alex Vanopslagh, Liberal Alliance, 42%, 28%
 -01%, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Moderates, 40%, 41%
 -01%, Mette Frederiksen, Social Democrats, 43%, 44%
 -11%, Søren Pape Poulsen, Conservatives, 32%, 43%
 -12%, Martin Lidegaard, Social Liberals, 20%, 32%
 -14%, Mai Villadsen, Red-Green Alliance, 22%, 36%
 -16%, Inger Støjberg, Denmark Democrats, 35%, 51%
 -17%, Jakob Ellemann-Jensen, Liberals, 31%, 48%
 -26%, Franciska Rosenkilde, Alternative, 10%, 36%
 -29%, Lars Boje Mathiesen, New Right, 8%, 37%
 -38%, Morten Messerschmidt, DPP, 20%, 58%

In terms of ministers, there is a bit less to say and it's still early in the term. A few ministers are quite popular, but perhaps mostly due to their record at their previous brief. This is particularly true for Heunicke, who was Minister of Health during covid. Despite the government itself becoming fairly unpopular with its talk of economic reforms, both the Finance and Economy ministers have not become very unpopular. And even Ane Halsboe, who is leading the charge to remove the Great Prayer Day as a holiday, isn't much in the red. But many ministers are in the area of slight disapproval overall. When looking at two of the potential Liberal leaders, if Ellemann does not return from his stress sickness, it's worth noting that Løhde is the second-most unpopular minister, only beaten by Ellemann himself, while Lund Poulsen is on evens. The four remaining Liberals ministers are largely unknown. The same is true for three of the Moderate ministers, with only Engel-Schmidt being a bit more recognized, perhaps due to his dual role as Minister of Culture and as the third wheel in the day-to-day economic leadership alongside Wammen and Lund Poulsen.

Ministers
+28%, Magnus Heunicke (A), Environment, 48%, 20%
+13%, Mattias Tesfaye (A), Children and Education, 38%, 25%
+07%, Nicolai Wammen (A), Finance, 32%, 25%
+03%, Morten Bødskov (A), Business, 24%, 21%
====, Lars Aagaard (M), Climate and Energy, 9%, 9%
====, Troels Lund Poulsen (V), Economy, 26%, 26%
 -01%, Marie Bjerre (V), Digitalization and Equality 8%, 9%
 -02%, Peter Hummelgaard (A), Justice, 20%, 22%
 -02%, Jacob Jensen (V), Food and Agriculture, 10%, 12%
 -03%, Kaare Dybvad (A), Immigration, 15%, 18%
 -03%, Christina Egelund (M), Higher Education and Science, 9%, 12%
 -04%, Louise Schack Egholm (V), Church, Rural Areas and Nordic Cooperation, 6%, 10%
 -04%, Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil (A), Social Affairs and Housing, 30%, 34%
 -04%, Thomas Danielsen (V), Transport, 6%, 10%
 -05%, Ane Halsboe-Jørgensen (A), Employment, 15%, 20%
 -05%, Mette Kierkgaard (M), Elderly, 4%, 9%
 -05%, Jakob Engel-Schmidt (M), Culture, 12%, 17%
 -07%, Dan Jørgensen (A), Development and Global Climate Policy, 26%, 33%
 -09%, Jeppe Bruus (A), Taxation, 10%, 19%
 -11%, Sophie Løhde (V), Interior and Health, 25%, 36%

[JimJamUK]

Epinion for DR has polled the approval rating of all party leaders and members of the government.

Do Danish pollsters ever give any kind of party or ideological subsamples for approval ratings? It would certainly be interesting to see Frederiksen’s net approval among the likes of SF or Venstre voters, and to see how much the good ratings for people like Olsen Dyhr, Vanopslagh and Tesfaye rely on support from voters within their own blocks (variously defined) vs genuine crossover appeal with people who would otherwise have little good to say about the rest of their party.

[Diouf]

On Tuesday is the third and final reading of the bill to abolish the Great Prayer Day as a holiday. Five of the opposition parties, SPP, Red-Green Alliance, Denmark Democrats, New Right and DPP, have announced that they won't make a so-called "clearing agreement" for that day. Usually all the parties make such agreements for all voting days, so only the number of MPs necessary to pass bills show up for the votes. So this means almost every MP will have to show up for the vote. So this adds even more show to the vote with a full chamber and some fierce debate from the opposition parties. In theory, this also adds extra pressure on each government MP, as they will have to directly put their name to it, which might feel a bit bad for some of the most union-loyal Social Democrat MPs for example. However, there have been no indication that any one of them will actually vote against the government line. Also the Social Liberals voted with the government on all amendments on the second reading, so it seems fairly certain they will vote to approve the final bill as well, so there should be no question that it's passed.

There is then the question of a possible referendum. If 60 MPs demand it within three days of a law passing, a referendum will be held. This option has only been used one time in history, back in 1963 where the centre-right forced a referendum on the Social Democrat government's unpopular landowning laws. The public voted 60-40 to reject the laws.
New Right, DPP, Red-Green Alliance and Alternative have said they want a referendum, but they do only have 26 seats. So they have to convince at least three of the four remaining parties opposed to the deal. Liberal Alliance, Conservatives, SPP and Denmark Democrats haven't rejected the possibility yet. They are generally a set of more 'responsible' parties, and have to balance between the advantages of giving the government a humiliating defeat, and starting a precedent of it becoming more normal for laws being thrown to a referendum, which could come back to haunt them once in government themselves.

[Diouf]

Epinion for DR has polled the approval rating of all party leaders and members of the government.

Do Danish pollsters ever give any kind of party or ideological subsamples for approval ratings? It would certainly be interesting to see Frederiksen’s net approval among the likes of SF or Venstre voters, and to see how much the good ratings for people like Olsen Dyhr, Vanopslagh and Tesfaye rely on support from voters within their own blocks (variously defined) vs genuine crossover appeal with people who would otherwise have little good to say about the rest of their party.

Haven't seen it recently, and it wasn't shown in this poll. But it was sometimes included, like in the polling of preferred PM candidates.

[JimJamUK]

Haven't seen it recently, and it wasn't shown in this poll. But it was sometimes included, like in the polling of preferred PM candidates.

Yeah, I vaguely remember it happening at the general election last year where Frederiksen was shown to have the universal support of Social Democratic voters. It’s a shame that Danish pollsters usually include only the headline figures, while pollsters in many other countries, most obviously the UK, can release an abundance of information in each publicly released poll.

[Diouf]

As expected the Social Liberals joined the government in voting to abolish the Great Prayer Day as a holiday from 2024. All MPs voted in accordance with their parties.
Denmark Democrats joined the opposition parties who demanded a referendum, but since both SPP, Liberal Alliance and Conservatives rejected this, the necessary 60 seats to trigger a referendum were not reached.
A poll on the day of the vote from Epinion for DR showed a massive 70 % of the voters being against the move to abolish the holiday, with only 19 % in favour and 11 % don't know

https://twitter.com/DRBreaking/status/1630593285885513728

[Diouf]

After a week with a lot of focus on the abolishment of the Great Prayer Day, Voxmeter's weekly poll for Ritzau shows the Social Democrats all the way down at 18.6% (-8.9% compared to the election), which would mean a loss of 17 seats from 50 to 33. The Liberals are at 11.9% (-1.4%) and the Moderates at 7.9% (-1.4%). Combined the government + its support party Social Liberals are at 42.7% (-11.2%) and would get 75 seats (-21).

As usual, the three biggest opposition parties are SPP at 14.5% (+6.2%), Liberal Alliance at 11.9% (+4.0%) and Denmark Democrats at 9.3% (+1.2%).

[Logical]

Danish voters: "I can excuse hostile anti immigration policies but I draw the line at cutting the number of public holidays!"

[Lord Halifax]

Danish voters: "I can excuse hostile anti immigration policies but I draw the line at cutting the number of public holidays!"

people who are in favor of anti-immigration policies don't view them as "hostile", but as protective of native culture and identity, the living standard of local workers, social cohesion or whatever they feel immigration may threaten and not some kind of moral flaw that needs to be excused.