Denmark Parliamentary Election - June 18, 2015

[Diouf]

The biggest net voter movements since the 2011 election made by Berlingske on numbers from TNS Gallup. It is from October 2014, but the polls have barely moved since then.

6 seats from the Liberals to the DPP
3 seats from the Social Democrats to the DPP
2 seats from the SPP to the Red-Green Alliance
2 seats from the Social Democrats to the Red-Green Alliance.
2 seats from the SPP to the Social Democrats.

Not that surprising movements. DPP is picking up massive amounts of votes from the two big parties, especially the Liberals. The EUvox graphic below shows what the DPP's new voters in the EP election 2014 had voted in the 2011 general election; the proportion between gained Liberal and Social Democrat votes is similar to the one above, around 2:1. To some degree this is because the DPP has already attracted so many former Social Democrats that there is a limit to how many more they can pick up. The Liberal to DPP move is probably due to a number of things; the Liberal leader's expenses scandals, the increased EU-scepticism which was activitated by the EP election, and that the Liberals have moved somewhat rightwards economically with their new principle of "zero growth" in the public sector whereas they promised and delivered a big increase in the public sector in the economic heydays before the economic crisis. DPP still promises further growth of the welfare state.

Also the left wing of the Social Democrats and SPP have moved leftwards to the Red-Green Alliance, while some of the SPP voters, like a number of their MPs, moved to the Social Democrats as they were actually willing to govern and were not having a civil war in public.

[Diouf]

Socialist People's Party was founded in 1958/59 as a Euro-Communist breakaway from the Moscow lapdog Communist Party of Denmark. It later incorporated large segments from the environmentalist, feminist and peace movements from the 70s and 80s as well as the lefty part of the Grundtvigian Folk High School movement (leaving them with the highest share of Lutheran Ministers of any party..). Despite being clobbered in the 2011 election SPP decided to enter government afterwards (for the first time ever), but got steamrolled on all major issues and had to leave after heavy internal infighting leading most of the party's Social Democratic "workerite" right wing to leave. After hovering dangerously close to the threshold the party is now stabilised a couple of percentage points below their (deeply unsatisfactory..) 2011 result by the new leader Pia Olsen Dyhr. It is spit between a Democratic Socialist left wing encompassing most of the membership and a Green right wing (with most of the leadership talent - incl. Olsen Dyhr) that would like the party to resemble the German Die Grüne.

Oh, come on Politicus - while the polls where much better, the 2011 election result for SF was the second best since 1987, 25 years!
And your idea that the majority of the membership of SF is in some kind of conflict with the leadership is complete nonsense... Don't believe everything that Berlingske and Jyllandsposten writes. If you want to read articles by someone who actually has good sources in SF, unlike fx. Thomas Larsen from Berlingske, who is polling analysis out of his arse, you should read Elisabeth Svane fra Fyns Stiftstidende.

I agree that the 2011 result was not bad for SF; it only seemed a very dramatic downturn after they had polled almost as much as the Social Democrats a year or two before. SF's best results were in the 80s and in 2007 where they were a strong voice of opposition. In 2011 they probably lost a significant part of those voters reluctant to make compromises and be governable before the election when the party committed very hard to a common governing platform with the Social Democrats in the run-up to the election. The stream from SF to the Red-Green Alliance then continued when SF got into government.

Didn't the 2012 leadership election show exactly that the majority of the membership was in a kind of conflict with the leadership? The candidate of the leadership only received 1/3 of the votes, and lost to a virtual nobody without much experience in national politics. The current leader of the party, Pia Olsen Dyhr, their group chairman, Jonas Dahl and their MEP, Margrethe Auken all supported the leadership candidate in that election, want to follow the line of being in government, and rank green issues higher than their members do. This might be less of a problem in the next years as they are probably not gonna be allowed to join another government, but it does look like the divide is basically still there.

[Diouf]

The eight party leaders, or political spokesperson for the Red-Green Alliance.



From left to right:
The two guys in the back are the Social Liberal leader, Deputy PM and Minister of the Economy and Interior Morten Østergaard and DPP leader Kristian Thulesen Dahl.
In the middle we have SPP leader Pia Olsen Dyhr; Liberal leader, former PM and currently leader of the opposition Lars Løkke Rasmussen; Liberal Alliance leader Anders Samuelsen, the Red-Green Alliance political spokesperson Johanne Schmidt-Nielsen, and Conservative leader Søren Pape Poulsen.
In the chair, of course, Social Democrat leader and PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt.

[Diouf]

New poll by Greens for Børsen.



Not generally a very remarkable poll. Still a huge lead for "blue bloc". Both the Social Democrats and the Liberals are getting near their 2011 election result; perhaps the doubters returning. But one potentially significant thing is that the score for "others" is the highest it has been for a very long time. This could be a bleep of course, but it might also be that one of the other candidates/parties is actually on the rise. The most realistic possibility is arguably the Alternative. According to Børsen, they have collected 15 000 out of the 20 000 signatures necessary to run, so they will probably be able to run in the forthcoming election. They could very well end up as wasted (mainly) left wing votes which would make it even harder for the "red bloc" to gather a majority. It doesn't exactly seem like the kind of party that would get a lot of votes in rural Western Jutland, so their best bet might be a multi-member constituency seat in a urban area, Copenhagen where their leader Uffe Elbæk is running, rather than getting 2% in the whole country.

[Diouf]

Why do you consider the Alternative a more likely possibility than Lars Hedegaard for Others? Even if it is "Other parties" they have clearly added Indie votes to that column (and his votes will come from the right).

DPP seems to have fallen behind the two big ones - it is beginning to look like a trend (but still uncertain).

I mainly just followed the newspaper itself which looked in that direction:

http://borsen.dk/nyheder/politik/artikel/1/297246/maaling_er_uffe_elbaek_ved_at_lave_en_sniger.html

Agree that it could be others than the Alternative. Just looked at Facebook, and can see that the National Party (20 639) actually has more likes than the Alternative (16 247). Danish Unity only has 366 likes, but it seems that it is not their main platform. However, the Alternative has the advantage of a way more well-known leader which is still an MP while the National Party only has a local councellor; I guess that is why the newspaper assumes that it is mainly the Alternative which is getting the votes. Elbæk also has 12 182 likes on FB, while the National Party leader Kashif Ahmad only has 3 470.

Hedegaard will take votes from the right yes, but only in one multimember constituency while the Alternative and the National Party, if they get enough signatures to run, will take votes in the whole country, although probably mainly in urban areas. I think the two left-wing alternatives will have a easier time at this election due to dissatisfaction with parties like the Social Liberals and SF, whereas DF will be more vulnerable if/when they return to a position of power (and thereby responsibility).

[Diouf]

I think that there is a segment of about 1-1,5% of voters who voted DPP last time but think the party has "gone soft" and that Hedegaard can tap into that group, but I admit I don't have much actual evidence to base that on. It is worth remembering that Hedegaard is far more well known than his backers in Danish Unity, so their almost non-existing support is not that relevant.
Elbæk's attempt at creating a Green party seems very amateurish and fluffy (I believe the only ones that could successfully build a green party in Denmark would be SPP right wingers who got tired of their True Leftists and decided to jump ship and start over with a new party, but Ida Auken - unfortunately - chose the Social Liberals). I consider the National Party a gimmick and a non-entity. I don't believe they have any real support.

yeah, the Danish Unity is not very important this time around as the campaign will mainly be around Lars Hedegaard who has quite a national profile. To gauge whether he can get anywhere near a seat, you would probably have to follow the media activity in the Sjælland multimember constituency where he is running. If he wants to be elected, he should probably already be quite active in local media and so on to make his candidature and themes well-known in the region. There are 20 seats in the constituency, so he will probably need 4-4.5 % of the votes to get one of them, which will a bit above 20 000 votes. The constituency is usually the DPP's strongest area; they got 16.1% in 2011 where they received 12.3% in the whole country. It is where former party leader Pia Kjærsgaard runs, and includes some of the (rural) areas where the party has the most strength like Guldborgsund where they almost provided the mayor after the last local election. So there is quite some DPP voters to harvest, but again the question is whether enough of them feel the need to change their vote after a term in opposition. Could be interesting with a constituency poll at some point to see whether Hedegaard has any traction, but I can't really remember ever seeing one in relation to national elections.

Agreed that a bunch of SPPers would have been the best shot at creating a green party, probably with the Aukens and perhaps even Pia Olsen Dyhr as the most prominent members. Margrethe Auken also said somewhere that if they were starting the party now, it would probably be called the Green Left or something like that. I have also been very skeptical about Elbæk's chances and reports from the party has made it sound more like a process party than one with actual significant policies; a bit like the Minority Party which ran in 2005. However, I am quite impressed that it seems like they will gather enough signatures to stand, which means that they must have at least a decent party organization.
The National Party has received less attention and the party name name and launch was certainly a gimmick, but I'm not sure that they are a complete non-entity. They do have a relatively significant digital presence, and have collected around 10 000 signatures, so there is a (small) chance that they could get enough to run. Certainly, it looks like they are the least likely to get in currently, but there is the wild card of the ethnic minority vote which they have a chance of getting on board.

[Diouf]

The Red-Green Alliance set to become the biggest party in Copenhagen

Altinget.dk has published a prognosis for Copenhagen's multi-member constituency based on a weighted average of polls. It predicts that the Red-Green Alliance will be the biggest party, and get 4 seats while the Social Democrats will be pushed down to second place, but maintain three seats. The three left-wing leaders all run in Copenhagen; the PM and Social Democrat leader Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the SPP leader Pia Olsen Dyhr, and the Red-Green political spokesperson, which if the election comes before June will be Johanne Schmidt-Nielsen. After that the rotation principle in the party sets in, and Pernille Skipper will take over. Schmidt-Nielsen received 47 002 personal votes in the 2011 election, the second-highest number, while Skipper only received 3 243 votes, although she was running in Fyn/Funen where the party's support is less than half of that in Copenhagen. Skipper has received a lot of attention in the last four years, so she will probably do really well were she to "lead" the party, both nationally and in Copenhagen, but still it would be an advantage for the Red-Green Alliance if the election is before June.

The constituencies were changed in 2007; before that Copenhagen area were divided into three smaller constituencies. I would think that this would be the first time for 100+ years that the Social Democrats would not become the most popular party in Copenhagen.
The nation-wide prognosis is unfortunately behind a pay-wall

Copenhagen constituency had 19 seats in the 2011 election, but Altinget's calculations show that they will get an extra seat in 2015. The official seat distribution is to be published shortly, I believe.

Copenhagen prognosis (change since 2011):
4 seats (+1) Red-Green Alliance
3 seats (=)   Social Democrats
3 seats (=)   Social Liberals
3 seats (=)   Liberals
3 seats (+1) DPP
2 seats (-1)  SPP
1 seat (=)     Liberal Alliance
1 seat (=)     Conservatives

http://www.altinget.dk/artikel/enhedslisten-overhaler-s-i-koebenhavn

[Diouf]

Wilke for Jyllands-Posten made a poll regarding a thing which we have discussed in this thread as well; the potential for a party to the right of DPP.

12.8% miss a party with a stricter immigration policy than DPP; 4.9% in the red bloc and 19.5% in the blue bloc.
12.9% would consider voting for a national conservative party with a immigrationstop as its main topic; 2.8% in the red bloc and 21.1% in the blue bloc.

Polls like that haven't really been made before, so it's difficult to know whether/how much this group has grown. But, as expected, it shows that there is a potential for the party to the right of the DPP. The question is still whether it can emerge while the DPP is in opposition.

[Diouf]

http://politik.tv2.dk/2015-01-30-grafik-hvor-kommer-dfs-mange-nye-vaelgere-egentlig-fra#RV

At the bottom of this page is a helpful tool to see how voters have moved since the 2011 election.

[Diouf]

http://politik.tv2.dk/2015-01-30-grafik-hvor-kommer-dfs-mange-nye-vaelgere-egentlig-fra#RV

At the bottom of this page is a helpful tool to see how voters have moved since the 2011 election.

The remaining 4% from non-voters?

DPP getting more voters from the Liberals than SD begs the question how many voters the Liberals are getting directly from SD. At the moment there seem to be more voters going directly from SD to Venstre than SD to DPP.

Otherwise it is hardly surprising that SD and Venstre are the main contributors. For most ordinary non-academic/teacher, non-affluent Danes there are generally only three relevant parties: SD, Venstre and DPP. Especially outside Greater Copenhagen. Even social clients tend to vote SD, DPP and Venstre and not left wing (as some right wing pundits want us to believe).
So DPP would naturally get its voters from Venstre and SD.

You can press the different letters and see the flow from and to every party.

The lacking % must be from non-voters and new voters when looking at 2015 composition, and to others, doubters and non-voters when looking at the flows from 2011. The lowest aggregate numbers for the 2011 voters are for Radikale and SPP; 80 and 82 % of their 2011 voters respectively are shown as flowing to a 2015 party. Both parties therefore seem to have lost a relatively large number of 2011 voters to the doubters and/or non-voters. Also the two parties are probably those most in danger of losing voters to others (the Alternative and the National Party). The Alternative is very close to having enough signatures; once that happens they will be prompted for in the polls as well, but I already suspect that they are behind some of the Radikale decline recently. The fact that the two parties have seen a significant flow to doubters means that some narrowing in the polls could happen once those voters make up their mind and (to a large extent) returns to their old party or another red bloc party.

The SD still leaks around 3 times as many 2011 voters to the DPP as they do to Venstre, which makes it by quite a margin the most significant movement between the blocs. The Venstre to DPP support is still approximately twice as big as the SD to DPP support, which confirms that it is the single largest voter movement.

[Diouf]

In another poll by Greens Analyseinstitut for Børsen, the Alternative got 1.7%, so a quite good start for the party.

The current polling average by professor Søren Risbjerg Thomsen for Altinget.dk

Social Democrats 22.4% 40 seats
Social Liberals 6.7% 12
Conservatives 4.4% 8
SPP 6.4% 12
Christian Democrats 0.8% 0
DPP 20.9% 37
Liberals 23.2% 41
Liberal Alliance 5.8% 10
Red-Greens 8.5% 15
Others 1% 0

This is the highest score for others in a long time. This is mainly the Alternative which is now being prompted for in the polls.

It is also the highest average for the Liberal Alliance since the 2011 election where they received 5.0%; however, they have been polling quite steadily and the above result will only allow them to gain one seat. One possible reason is that they received a bit of legitimacy and attention as a calculation from the Ministry of Finance showed that their economic plan would create 124 000 jobs in ten years. This caused a number of TV debates between the Liberal Alliance leader and the Social Democrat minister of Finance, which the latter didn't handle all too well.

The Social Liberal average has now been falling for six straight months; from 8.3% in September to 6.7% now. One significant factor is that their leader Margrethe Vestager became EU commissioner, and her replacement Morten Østergaard does not have remotely the same respect and popularity yet. Also immigration questions have become more salient than in the 2011 election, which could have caused them to leak voters to both sides. Voters which want tougher policies might choose the Social Democrats instead, while those who think the government's new measures have been too strict could leave for the SPP or even the Red-Greens. Finally, the Alternative is lead by a former Social Liberal MP and Minister of Culture, so a significant amount of their voters are probably disillusioned social liberals. It should be remembered, however, that their 2011 result of 9.5% was their best result since 1973, and that since then their average result has been 5.7%, so historically this result would not be a disaster.

The polling average predicts that the Conservatives will only get 8 seats, like in the 2011 election. This means that it is highly questionable whether their new leader Søren Pape Poulsen will actually get a seat. In 2011 the party did not win a seat in Vestjylland where he is running, and although he can probably improve the party's fortunes in some areas of the multimember constituency as the former mayor of Viborg, it is by no means certain that this will be enough to steal a Conservative seat from one of the other constituencies. The most vulnerable seats, according to Risbjerg Thomsen, are the seats in Nordsjælland and Fyn.

[Diouf]

The Alternative is above the threshold for the first time in a poll by YouGov for MetroExpress. They get 2.2%. YouGov does generally show higher results for insurgents and tend to show new trends more drastically than other parties. In the same poll, the Liberal Alliance is at 7.1% and DPP at 22.6% which is some the highest figures those parties have polled.

I lean towards seeing Riskær as a liability for the Alternative should he be chosen as a candidate (which I don't think he will be). He can certainly pick up some new votes; probably among some of the Liberal Alliance or Conservative voters, who are considering voting for them. But I think he will damage their base and their potential left-wing voters, whom are to get them into parliament, way too much. His reputation of putting profit above everything, even the law, does not harmonize with the party at all. One of their main points is a sustainable society which is less focused on superficial consumption. Also they have been quite critical of the banking and financial sectors and propose quite wideranging reforms.
Riskær has said that the Alternative is too much about "peace and love" and that he can provide them with a much needed "twist of business". I think their chances of passing the threshold is far higher with "peace and love" than with Riskær's "twist of business".

[Diouf]

Norstat for Altinget has made a poll of which party people would vote for if they could not vote for their preferred party.



The Liberals are, perhaps unsurprisingly, the most common second choice ahead of the DPP and the SPP. The Liberals have dropped quite significantly in recent months, but many of those fleeing voters could probably still see them as the second choice.

I find it a bit suprising that so many of the Social Liberal voters would pick a blue bloc party as their second choice. They of course share many ideas about the economic policies with those parties, but would have expected more to choose another left wing party due to similar views on immigration, law and order etc. One partial explanation is perhaps that these kind of voters make up most of the around 2% which have already left the Social Liberals in recent months.

Also slightly suprising that not more of Liberal Alliance and Conservative voters have each other as the second choice due to their shared ambitions of reducing (top) taxes and public spending. There does seem to be some kind of tribalism and dislike towards each other among the two parties as they fight for relatively similar causes, but the main reason is probably that their voters are relatively different. Liberal Alliance voters are younger, more business school, nouveau riche and protest-like, while Conservative voters tend to be older, cultured and more focused on stability.

The chart also shows the cordial relations between the Liberals and the DPP; around 40% of both parties' voters see each other as the best alternative. This suggests that large parts of both parties wouldn't mind being in a government together. It will probably not happen, at least not immediately after a "blue bloc" election win. A referendum on turning the Danish opt-out on justice and home affairs into an opt-in will be held before the second quarter of 2016; here the parties will be campaigning for different outcomes. That would probably be to big a strain on a government, especially considering the ferociousness with which the DPP likes to attack in EU questions. Even without the referendum, questions of EU and the willingness to accept international conventions would be difficult to agree on.

[Diouf]

Polling average for March by professor Søren Risbjerg Thomsen for Altinget.dk

A    Socialdemokraterne    23.2    42
B    Radikale Venstre    6.9    12
C    Konservative Folkeparti    5.0    9
F    Socialistisk Folkeparti    6.7    12
I    Liberal Alliance    5.8    10
K    Kristendemokraterne    0.6    0
O    Dansk Folkeparti    19.2    35
V    Venstre    22.1   40
Ø    Enhedslisten    8.3    15
Å    Alternativet    1.8    0
-    Others    0.5        


Norstat poll for Altinget.dk

Which policy areas have the most influence for how you will vote? (You can pick up to three areas)

Immigration and refugees: 45 %
Labour market: 38 %
Health: 34 %
Social policy: 30 %
Economic policy: 28 %
Taxation: 23 %
Environment: 14 %
Energy and Climate: 14 %
EU: 9 %
Law and order: 8 %
Transport policies: 5 %
Defence: 4 %
Food policies: 4 %
Housing: 4 %
Foreign policy: 3 %
Cultural policies: 2 %
None of the above: 4 %

Some of the categories might be a big vague, but labour market will probably mainly be understood as unemployment and wage levels. Especially the former as there is no state minimum wage; it is decided in negotiations between employer organisations and trade unions. Social policies I would understand as the efforts to help very vulnerable persons like homeless people, but unemployment benefits will probably also be in that category since there is no other category where it seems to belong. Perhaps it could be understood to be in the labour market category as well. Normally, I believe it's a category on its own. Economic policy would mainly be the budget deficit.

[Diouf]

Ah, I see even Denmark falls into the "males are reffered to by their last name - females by their first name" patronizing category of countries like Brazil in their Presidential race recently. Good to know.

Lökke was his middle name though, right?

Yeah, but since Rasmussen is a very common name, and was the name of three PMs in a row, the middle name is by far the most used. He will either be called Lars Løkke or his full name Lars Løkke Rasmussen. If you just said Lars Rasmussen, no one would think of the politician; many would probably think of this former handballer, turned coach, instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw-oK9_OxcI

The same was the case with Anders Fogh and Poul Nyrup.

This is a poster from the Social Democrats, so it could be seen as personalize ourselves, depersonalize the opponent trick, but it is probably mainly a reflection of the fact that these are the two most used short versions of their names which could be seen as patronizing, I guess.

[Diouf]

One of the local Liberal candidates which are rising to the national level at this election is 44-year old Carl Holst. He is currently the Chairman of the Region of Southern Denmark, and before the regions were created, he had been the County Mayor of South Jutland since 2000. He was a leader of the Liberal Youth from 1993 to 1995, and a county councillor since 1993.
He is the candidate who is most certain to be elected MP of all those running as he runs in the multi-member constituency with the most Liberal seats, Southern Jutland, and he will be the most popular Liberal candidate there. In the 2013 regional elections he received 94 197 personal votes out of the 686 956 votes cast in the region.
Holst grew up on a folk high scool where his dad was a teacher, when the dad was not focusing on his roles as mayor and MP. Carl and his wife are both teachers as well, so he certainly got a huge base in the folksy, rural Grundtvig part of the Liberals. However, he is also a good friend of Løkke, and was loyal to him during the leadership battle. He knows Peter Christensen very well from their time together in the Liberal Youth in Southern Jutland, and is credited with "inventing" Peter Christensen as a real politician.
Perhaps, he could be a kind of compromise candidate which could be accepted by most camps. He might not be personally popular among Kristian Jensen and his supporters, but I think enough of them would accept him as his idelogical background is rather similar to e.g. Kristian Jensen.

[Diouf]

Glistrup had an unsual charisma, excellent verbal skills and a powerful message + it was back in another era.

Looks prevented highly qualified Henning Christophersen from ever getting the chairmanship of Venstre - and Peter Christensen is nowhere near Christophesen-level in intelligence and political capability.

Otherwise I agree.

Do you mean from becoming PM? He was the leader of Venstre from 1977 to 1984.

[Diouf]

The pre-election campaign reaches new heights...



The increasingly desperate Conservatives are now launching a campaign against what they call "NaziIslamism". Fuelled by the return of Naser Khader from the Hudson Institute, the party has again focused on his favourite topic, the fight against Islamism. Quotes from an article written by Khader and party leader Søren Pape Poulsen: "By comparing the two ideologies, people will more easily understand what we are dealing with. That's why we call it NaziIslamism. A dangerous inner enemy which must be defeated and eliminated". "We have to eliminate the root causes behind the spread of the ideology, and fight Islamism with weapons here and now [in Syria and Iraq]." The only real solution given to fight Islamism is Denmark is opposition to a few well-known "hatefull preachers" in a few specific mosques.

[Diouf]

Conservatives here is consistently referring to Konservative Folkeparti right?

That's a bananas campaign.

Yes

It seems like they are now trying to brand themselves of some sort of protest party. They have launched a whole "Stop" theme. Stop rule tyranny, stop the thief, stop the land tax etc

I hope this will be their campaign song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JD6ejmlpa8

[Diouf]

Does anyone have an exit poll from the last election or something like that which breaks down demographics in Danish politics? Gender, occupation, etc.

I'm not sure that there are any demographic data set that can be explored free of charge. For a in-depth analysis of the 2011 election, there is the (Danish) book Krisevalg - Økonomien og folketingsvalget 2011.

The best bet is probably altinget.dk otherwise, but most of their (great) stuff is behind a paywall. I can upload a few of the most important tables.

Age and gender:
http://tinypic.com/r/otom5f/8

Workers, lower end salaried employees (without management responsibility and higher education), higher end salaried employees (with management responsibility and/or higher education). Salaried employees would be around the same as white-collar
http://tinypic.com/r/egxonc/8

Self-employed in agriculture, self-employed in city trades, students
http://tinypic.com/r/2mnevk8/8

Pensioners, unemployed
http://tinypic.com/r/2myq4om/8

Notice N is the number of respondents. For one or two of the table, this number is very low so the figure is probably only from one subsamble.

EDIT: Can't get the picture function to work, so will just write the links.

[Diouf]

The Soc Libs have been in coalition with the blue block before right? What's stopping them crossing the floor to prop up a right-wing government?

The answer is DF/DPP. The Soc Libs and DP are polar opposites on so many areas, EU, immigration, taxation, education, that it would be inconceivable with a government depending on/consisting of both of them. Their voters are as different as they can get in Denmark; DP's standard voter is the old working class/unemployed/pensioner man outside the big cities while the Soc Lib is the young woman with a higher education degree living in one of the big cities. They both hate each other with a vengeance; probably the two parties which despise each other the most.
No polls have shown anything resembling a centre-right majority, i.e. Liberals, Conservatives, Liberal Alliance and Soc Libs. The latest polling average gave them only 70 seats combined.

[Diouf]

Could, as the DPP and SD both moderate and move closer to Venstre, we ever see a grand alliance between the three? Does Denmark have any experiences with that either nationally or locally?

We had a coalition between Venstre and SD in the 70ties, it was a disaster. Locally coalition are muddy, and often based on personality. SD in Hvidovre sit on DPP votes, on Lolland they use Venstre's votes. But in Lyngby-Taarbæk the Conservative and SD are usual in coalition together with a Conservative mayor. Local politics are vastly different from the national one in Denmark.

English summary of academic paper on the SD-Venstre government:

The Social Democratic-Liberal Government’s  Background, Formation and Short Life

In the summer of 1978 the Danish Social Democratic party and the Liberal Party formed a coalition government. Its main purpose, it claimed, was to restore Denmark’s economy, which had deteriorated steadily since the first oil crisis. The government was an ’historic’ experiment, because the two parties had a long record of opposition to each other. This article deals with the government’s formation, its course and the reasons why it lasted little more than one
year.
In August 1978, when the two parties decided to form a coalition government, both parties had an interest in restoring the economic situation, though other motives concerning the parliamentarian situation, the parties’ interests, and personal motives also played a role. The most important agreement between the two parties was a declaration of intent concerning incomes policy. The aim was a tight incomes policy in the years to come. The government
planned tripartite negotiations between trade unions, employers and government.
The trade unions strongly resented the coalition. Prime Minister Anker Jørgensen, leader of the Social Democratic party, was heavily influenced by the confrontations between the party and the trade unions. Instead of fighting for the coalition, Anker Jørgensen sought to satisfy the trade unions. The government did not succeed with the tripartite negotiations. In the end the government had to make another statutory incomes policy solution. It was a solution that did not fulfil the declaration of intent concerning incomes policy, but it was a solution that pleased the trade unions.
In September 1979 the government broke down, only partly because of internal disagreement about policies to fight the economic crisis, but mainly due  to the Social Democrats’ unclear position. The party’s weak leader had limited priorities concerning the economy and too many internal problems.

http://www.historisktidsskrift.dk/pdf_histtid/104_1/122.pdf

[Diouf]

A table from Altinget.dk which shows how voters have moved since the 2011 election. The movement is shown in seats; one seat requires the movement of about 20 000 voters which is just above 0.5% of the voters.
Not much new to notice in terms of movement.
The seven largest net movements are:
V to DF
Sofa to DF
S to DF
R to S
SF to EL
SF to S
S to sofa

"Ikke st" are the changes due to the voting eligibility of those who weren't old enough to vote in 2011 and those voters who have died since then. This generational shift costs the Liberals and especially the Social Democrats. The death of many loyal Social Democrats and their terrible standing among the new voters looks like it will cost them almost 2 seats. Too bad that the voting age can't be raised without a referendum; otherwise Helle could have made strides towards re-election by doing just that

[Diouf]

In a new poll by Megafon, V is bleeding voters to (mainly) S and DF (V is 4,7 %-points down since last month's poll, while  S is 2 %-points up and DF is 1,7 %-points up since last month), while Alternativet is exactly hitting the 2%-threshold of representation. Even with this infusion of votes, red bloc (including Alternativet) only counts 48% of the (represented) votes in total, which primarily is because R (the social liberals) lose 1,8 %-points. Except V and R, all parties of the Folketing gain votes.

Well, it's not that easy. As the charts of voter movement shows, there is very little net movement from V to S. According to Megafon which made the above poll, 2% of the 2011 V voters wil vote S and 2% of the 2011 S voters will vote V. V is losing most of its 2011 supporters to DF (17%) and quite a bit to LA as well (7%).
The Social Democrat's main sources of support are still SF and R voters.
What seems to be happening is that as the election campaign is basically already on, some of those Social Democrat voters who have been undecided for quite a while are now making their mind up and have decided to vote for them again. Some of the S to DF voters are maybe coming back as well, but still 8% of the 2011 Social Democrats would now vote for DF, while only 2% of DFs voters have made the opposite move.

According to Megafon, the Alternativet voters are almost exclusively people who voted for the "red bloc" in 2011; 26% are former SF, 24% are former S, 22% are former Ø and 21 % former R.

[Diouf]

Venstre brings back popular figure just in time for the election


Søren Gade, who was Minister of Defence from 2004 - 2010, has just announced that he will run in the 2015 election. He is a very popular figure among many Liberals, especially those in his home area of Western Jutland. Somewhat surprisingly, he will run in Aalborg, but perhaps there are simply not many empty wards left at this point or Northern Jutland needed a strong Liberal candidate more than Western Jutland. In all likelyhood he will be elected to parliament there as well.
He was a very popular minister, and in the 2007 election he received 24 000 personal votes, the second highest number of all Liberal candidates. However, he had to quite as Minister of Defence after an embarrassing case. Employees in the Defence Command had google translated a book by a former special forces soldier into Arabic, and then used that version as evidence that the book would cause security risks for Denmark and therefore had to be stopped. From 2012 to 2014, he was the CEO of the Danish Agriculture and Food Council.

He played a significant role in the leadership battle in the Liberals last year. Lars Løkke and his backers claimed that if Kristian Jensen forced Løkke to resign, then Søren Gade would stand as leader candidate against Kristian Jensen. Something which probably played a part in making Jensen back down. Gade's entrance into the parliamentary group after the election might bring some unease for Jensen and his backers, who could fear that Gade will get a high-ranking Minister post instead of them, and/or will be positioned as the new leader once Løkke resigns.