DENMARK - 5 June 2019 election

[Diouf]

TV2 News have made nice 3D-printed figures of all the party leaders, which they use in the "Campaign Trail" programme, where they discuss the daily election news, and what will happen the next day. I think they are quite nice

[BlueSwan]

In another desperate move, Lars Løkke Rasmussen is now rehashing the ancient and previously failed idea of a coalition government between Venstre and the Social Democrats (happened in 1978-1979 and worked horribly). It is easy to see what Lars Løkke would gain from such a coalition (continued political relevance, a cabinet post or the post as EU commissioner), but very difficult indeed to see what the Social Democrats would gain, when they can fairly easily base a single party S government on red bloc votes. In neighboring countries (Sweden and Germany) where similar coalitions have emerged, it has been exactly because the red bloc did not have a working majority while the blue blocs had right wing extremists that they did not want to base their government on.

[DavidB.]

Also a great way for him to lose votes to the Conservatives and LA, I imagine...

[Diouf]

A number of MP from the softer-immigration wing in Liberals support the move publicly. Mainly to avoid dealing with New Right and Tough Line. Since Paludan has mentioned some of them by name as persons who should be put on trial for treason, it is understable that they prefer not trying to deal with Tough Line at all.
Deputy Leader Kristian Jensen has been more hesitant. He says he agree with Løkke that a centre-right government is the first priority. He also says that if Liberals lose the PM post, they are open for cooperation on political deals, but says he can't imagine a SV-government. He is probably not interested in being left as leader of a party, which is junior partner in a coalition their voters won't like. In the book, Løkke also makes another lash out at Kristian Jensen by stating that Løkke had promised his wife to step down before this general election, but that "I had set the ship on the sea. If I left, and there are no safe hands at the helm, the ship goes down". Not exactly a motion expressing confidence in Jensen's abilities. So on top of a Blue Bloc meltdown, we might also get a full-scale internal Liberal war.

Among the other parties, the reactions are fairly predictable.
Red-Greens, SPP are strongly opposed. Alternative leader Uffe Elbæk has predicted this for some weeks, but it doesn't sound like something he can support. Particularly stating that the two parties are too footdragging on climate issues, especially the Liberals.
DPP is positive. They often talk about sensible solutions, and the big parties going together to create stable solutions to migrant problems and welfare issues. Thulelsen Dahl argues that this could mean that Liberal Alliance demands on economy/taxation and Social Liberal demands on immigration won't matter.
The Social Liberals are also quite positive, and hope to see the extreme positions lose influence. But funnily, they see other parties as dangerous extremes than DPP. Østergaard says he hopes this can cut the big parties off from dependence on DPP and far-right parties with continued immigration tightetnings.
Liberal Alliance and Conservatives are angry, and both try to position themselves as the obvious receivers of dissatisfied Liberal voters. Liberal Alliance is already making ads, which offers LA membership for free for former Liberal members.
New Right and Tough Line naturally also very angry, and will intensify attacks on Løkke and Liberals.

Interesting to see what this will mean. Løkke hopes to gain some centrist, stability voters by being a moderate hero, but surely it also opens up the possibility for severe losses to the right. And do the voters in the first group trust him enough to go to the Liberals? This move should also remove any remaining doubt that Mette Frederiksen will be the new PM. The question now is more or less with what support and on which conditions? With both the DPP and Liberals as potential support parties, she has a lot of opportunities. With her promises on welfare spending, I would think that the Liberals would be quite low on her ranking of preferable options, but it could perhaps be used as a negotiating tool to keep the left-wing parties from making to outlandish demands.

[bigic]

The Social Liberals are also quite positive, and hope to see the extreme positions lose influence. But funnily, they see other parties as dangerous extremes than DPP.

New Right and Tough Line are more extreme than DPP. The statement is untrue only if they thought of more parties than these two.

[Diouf]

The Social Liberals are also quite positive, and hope to see the extreme positions lose influence. But funnily, they see other parties as dangerous extremes than DPP.

New Right and Tough Line are more extreme than DPP. The statement is untrue only if they thought of more parties than these two.

It was more meant in the way that both DPP and Social Liberals see this as a possible way to keep extremes out of power. However, the parties Social Liberals see as dangerous extremes are other parties than those mentioned by DPP (they see each other as extremes)

[Diouf]

Megafon poll for TV2 in Southern Jutland constituency
The 18 constituency seats would go to Social Democrats (6, +1), Liberals (5, =), DPP (3, -3), Red-Greens (1, =), Social Liberals (1, +1), SPP (1, +1), New Right (1, +1), Liberal Alliance (0, -1). There will then be a number of compensatory seats, but these require knowing the national result.
DPP take a massive 12.9% blow in their strongest 2015 constituency, where party leader Kristian Thulelsen Dahl is running. A fair bit of that is won by New Right, whose party leader Pernille Vermund wins an impressive 4.6% for the party and a constituency seat (the 16th of the 18). Social Liberals and SPP both double their 2015 result, and take a constituency seat each. The Conservatives almost do the same, but just misses out on a constituency seat (19th in the distribution order). A massive blow for the Liberal Alliance, perhaps intensified here by the fact that Minister of Culture Mette Bock is not running again. Social Democrats increase by 3.3% and looks likely to become the biggest party, while the Liberals decline further after the 2015 onslaught.

[Diouf]

Megafon poll for TV2 in Copenhagen constituency.
The 16 constituency seats would go to Social Democrats (4, =), Red-Green Alliance (3/4, =/+1), Social Liberals (2/3, +1/2), SPP (2, +1), Liberals (1, -1), Alternative (1, -1), DPP (1, -1), Conservatives (1, +1), Liberal Alliance (0, -1). There will be a number of compensatory seats as well. The final constituency seat is equal between Red-Green Alliance and Social Liberals.
Social Democrats and Red-Green Alliance are very close as the former looks like declining, while the far-left increases further in the capital. The Alternative is almost halved but still retain a constituency seat, while both Social Liberals and SPP make big increases.
DPP drops a lot, and goes from 2 to 1 constituency seat, which means that the party's prominent immigration spokesperson Martin Henriksen could lose his seat. A compensatory seat is possible, but not likely with such a low result. Similarly, the Liberals go from 2 to 1 constituency seats, although a compensatory seat here could save Jan E. Jørgensen from the party's left wing on immigration.
The Conservatives increase and look set to win a constituency seat, after failing to win a seat at all in Copenhagen in 2015 for the first time in decades. This would likely be for lawyer Nikolaj Høgh in the central Frederiksberg, which is one of the party's traditional strongholds. Liberal Alliance just loses its constituency seat, but deputy leader and Minister of Economy and Interior Simon Emil Ammitzbøll-Bille could probably count on a compensatory seat to return to parliament.
A very poor sign for Klaus Riskær Pedersen to be at only 0.5% in the constituency where Klaus Riskær Pedersen himself is running.

[Diouf]

Megafon poll for TV2 in Western Jutland constituency.
The 13 constituency seats would go to Social Democrats (4, =), Liberals (4, -1), DPP (2, -1), SPP (1, +1), Conservatives (1, +1), Red-Green Alliance (1, +1), Liberal Alliance (0, -1). There will be a number of compensatory seats as well.
The Social Democrats just go past the Liberals in a traditional Liberal stronghold. Christian Democrats increase to 3.9% here, but the last constituency seat is won on 5.6% in this poll. So this confirms that if they are to win a constituency seat, they need a result close to the 2% nationally anyway. Conservative party leader and Minister of Justice, Søren Pape Poulsen, gives the party a strong result and wins a constituency seat (in 2015, he was elected on a compensatory seat).
SPP doubles its vote and wins a constituency seat, likely for new young hope, the nurse Signe Munk. In 2015, the party did not win a seat at all in the constituency. Also a sign of the Red-Green's nationwide presence, that they look set to win a constituency seat in Western Jutland. Another big loss for DPP.

[DavidB.]

If I understand things right, Venstre is preparing for a political collapse? If so, why? I know the social dems and the right-populist parties are doing well in polling, but don't know the details of domestic politics there.

No, it's DPP (the right-wing populists) who are going to collapse. Venstre are merely set to lose a bit more compared to their already very poor 2015 result.

The DPP are losing because of a) the fact that the SocDems have moved right on immigration, b) the DPP had a role in a set of pretty unpopular policies regarding healthcare and the regions, viewed negatively by their more working-class and older base c) increased competition to the DPP's right (Hard Line + New Right), d) the fact that they can't really be viewed as anti-establishment anymore given that they've been necessary partners for the government for the last 14 out of 18 years.

[Diouf]

Christian Democrats above 2% in new Voxmeter poll. The first time they are above in the threshold in several years. New Right is just below 2%, while Tough Line is above it. Interesting to see if other polls show Christian Democrats there or thereabout.

[Diouf]

Greens poll for Børsen also has Christian Democrats above the threshold. They have Tough Line below it. SPP is bigger than the Red-Green Alliance.

[parochial boy]

Out of curiosity, how come DPP do so well in Southern Jutland? Is that likely to translate directly into support for the new parties?

[mileslunn]

What are the chances of the Blue Bloc pulling off an upset similar to what we saw a few days ago in Australia?  Red Bloc has been leading in the polls for a long time, but in some countries, although not always (in Spain right underperformed polls) right tends to underperform.  Granted Red Bloc has a bigger lead than Labor did in Australia and there is less than two weeks left but still any chance Blue Bloc could pull off an upset?

[Person Man]

The Russians.

[Diouf]

Out of curiosity, how come DPP do so well in Southern Jutland? Is that likely to translate directly into support for the new parties?

It helps that their leader Kristian Thulesen Dahl is running in the constituency. But generally, it is probably because there are more people with lower than average incomes and shorter educations living outside urban centers. They are a broad people's party, but those are the groups where they are overrepresented. There is not a whole lot of solid data on New Right and Tough Line yet. The small subsets some media have mentioned suggest that both parties are very man-heavy, but Tough Line seems to be winning more purely from DPP and non-voters with lower educations while New Right picks up a fair bit of voters with higher education and higher income because they also win voters from Liberals, Liberal Alliance and Conservatives. And for these two new parties, their party leader constituencies will probably also show up in the results. And both have chosen a DPP-heavy area, Pernille Vermund in Southern Jutland and Rasmus Paludan in Zealand.

[Diouf]

Polling change since the start of the campaign. Based on average of 7 pollsters (Greens, Megafon, Voxmeter, Gallup, Epinion, Norstat, YouGov).
Not exactly a right wing comeback on the cards yet, although the Christian Democrat rise can help a bit if they cross 2% (the two other threshold criteria can't be tested here)

Social Democrats 27.5% (+0.9%) 49 seats (+1)
Social Liberals 7.5% (+0.3%) 13 seats (=)
Conservatives 4.5% (-0.1%) 8 seats (=)
New Right 3.2% (+0.3%) 6 seats (+1)
Klaus Riskær Pedersen 0.9% (+0.3%) 0 seats (=)
SPP 7.7% (+0.3%) 14 seats (+1)
Liberal Alliance 3.8% (=) 7 seats (=)
Christian Democrats 1.5% (+0.4%) 0 seats (=)
DPP 11.1% (-0.9%) 20 seats (-1)
Tough Line 2.2% (-0.8%) 4 seats (-1)
Liberals 18.0% (-0.2%) 32 seats (-1)
Red-Green Alliance 8.6% (-0.4%) 16 seats (=)
Alternative 3.4% (=) 6 seats (=)

[BlueSwan]

What are the chances of the Blue Bloc pulling off an upset similar to what we saw a few days ago in Australia?  Red Bloc has been leading in the polls for a long time, but in some countries, although not always (in Spain right underperformed polls) right tends to underperform.  Granted Red Bloc has a bigger lead than Labor did in Australia and there is less than two weeks left but still any chance Blue Bloc could pull off an upset?

At the risk of being overconfident, I'm going to have to say no, and I'm usually NEVER confident that my side wins.

But this time...the polling lead is just too big, too consistent and the prime minister too unpopular overall for the blue bloc to make a comeback. I just don't see it happening. The danish voting population really isn't THAT volatile.

Infact, if I was a member of Venstre, I would probably hope for all of the small new blue bloc parties to fail to get over 2%, because if they get in, that will just lead to more problems in the future. If I was anybody but Lars Løkke in Venstre, I would pretty much just write off this election and start focusing on the future.

The irony is that Lars Løkke is making a BIG DEAL about how the social democrats are going to have to rely on the Red-Green alliance, while the problems on his side of the aisle are far far greater. Tough Alliance and the Red-Green alliance really cannot be compared.

[Diouf]

Christian Democrat leader-on-leave Stig Grenov is trying his best to sabotage the party's chances. Isabella Arendt, the caretaker, has tried to make abortion less of an issue, and say it's not the party's main priority. Grenov then tweeted. "It's like all women must have an abortion if they are to be considered modern and liberated. And the best thing is to leave them completely alone with that ethical dilemma." He's deleted the tweet now, but removed some of the goodwill buzz Arendt has ridden.

A new Gallup poll from Faroe Island showed a bigger difference than usual between the parties. The centre-right Union Party is the biggest on 28.8%, the pro-union Social Democratic Party is at 24.3%, the left-wing pro-independence Republic is at 21.6% while the right wing pro-independence People's Party is at 18.6%. So it looks like a seat for each side in parliament, and for the "calmer" pro-union parties. The possibility of 2 Blue Bloc MPs, which looked likely some months ago, seems far away on that poll. I haven't seen any polling from Greenland, and doubt there will be any. There are rumours that Greenlandic PM Kim Kielsen will retire soon, but has rejected the speculation so far. Without any information, the basic guess must still be a Siumut and IA MP, but the situation is more fluid than usual with an ascendant Democrats and current MP Aleqa Hammond running for the small separatist Nunatta Qitornai.

Social Liberals have ditched their opposition to a financial transaction tax, so it now seems like something the left wing parties could carry through. In 2011-2015, the Social Liberals blocked it as they believed an international solution was the only way forward. Now they are open to joining the enhanced cooperation in EU with 10 countries about such a tax.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

What sort of positions do the Christian Democrats have on immigration?

[Diouf]

What sort of positions do the Christian Democrats have on immigration?

Quite far to the left. They are very critical of the conditions in asylum centers, the cuts in benefts for immigrants, the stop for receiving UN quota refugees (i.e. most of the Blue Bloc + Social Democrat policies).
On their policy site it says things like "It is not the number of refugees, but a failed integration policy, which have caused some problems for Denmark" and "Asylum seekers should have access to the Danish labour market from the day they make their application". They sound quite similar to a party like the Social Liberals, except for the occasional reminder of how many Christians are persecuted refugees and that we maybe should prioritize getting them here.

[BlueSwan]

If the european parliamentary elections yesterday is any indication whatsoever for the general election, then it is generally good news for the the red bloc, which got a combined 57,4% of the vote, if you count the Anti-EU coalition that is generally left wing, as part of the bloc.

It is not quite as easy as that, though, as I can imagine quite a few usual blue bloc voters, giving their vote to the social liberals for being the most pro EU party, for instance. But certainly not a bad result for the red bloc.

Also, a surprisingly good result for Venstre. They got 23,5% of the vote and became the biggest party. I wonder how that happened actually. I guess they had some fairly strong candidates and the DPP meltdown along with the generally more positive vibe regarding the EU in Danmark, all helped.

Likewise, the social democrats, while improving a bit on the last EU election, had an overall worse night than they would have liked, but will be happy that red bloc parties dominated overall.

Also, good news that the conservatives kept their one seat and hence danish representation in the EPP group. For the life of me I can't figure out why any center-right person would vote Venstre over the Conservatives for this EU election, but oh well.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Also, a surprisingly good result for Venstre. They got 23,5% of the vote and became the biggest party. I wonder how that happened actually. I guess they had some fairly strong candidates and the DPP meltdown along with the generally more positive vibe regarding the EU in Danmark, all helped.

I was actually really surprised by Venstre finishing first and was hoping someone would be able to explain it to me, but you seem to be as surprised as me.

Could it mean Venstre will have a better result on June 5th than polls are suggesting?

[BlueSwan]

Could it mean Venstre will have a better result on June 5th than polls are suggesting?

I doubt it.

Intuitively, I think it was the quality of candidates, really. Venstre had good candidates and candidates that appealed to different kinds of voters. Conservatives had a completely unknown candidate. Liberal Alliance is in general meltdown mode and doesn't have an real EU profile. The DPP, of course, is in complete meltdown mode, which was strenghtened by them not having Morten Messerschmidt this time around to save them, and the fact that Brexit and climate change has made danes much more appreciative of our EU membership.

But yeah, despite this, I didn't expect them to do quite this well.

[Diouf]

The Social Democrat patterns are likely to be repeated in the general election. Losing votes in Copenhagen (from 18.8% to 15.0%), but increasing their share outside the biggest cities. In Zealand, they increased their share from 18.8% to 23.8% with the biggest increase coming in the poor Lolland island (from 22.1% to 33.0%). And in Southern Jutland, they increased from 17.6% to 22.2%