Some of the takeaway from the EP elections:
- The government is really unpopular. The three parties only received a combined 36.3% of the votes.
- The campaign was de facto quite short, around 5-6 days from the party leader debate until polling day. So impressions from these days made a significant effect, and votes couldn't be turned back around. Obvious in the poor results from Liberal Alliance and Social Democrats, and the great results by Liberals, SPP and Social Liberals.
- The Social Democrats are further hemorrhaging voters in the major cities, which causes quite a lot of concern ahead of the local elections in a year and half. In Copenhagen, they only received 9.7% and in Aarhus 12.9%. And in the 2021 local elections, they already lost around 10% in both of these cities. In Copenhagen that brought them down to 17.2% back then, and if they fall back further, there is a real risk that they will struggle to even become the second-largest party, and their grip on the Lord Mayor role will become more tenous.
- The combined mood in government might be more a fear of backlash over not enough climate action than backlash over too much climate action. DPP and Denmark Democrats did fine enough, but not massively so. While SPP and Social Liberals did really well, as did the greenest of the Blue parties, the Conservatives. So perhaps that will have some effect on how brave the government will be about the carbon tax on farming being discussed.
