DENMARK - 5 June 2019 election

[BlueSwan]

3) I dislike callling SDs view on immigration for populist, because Alternative and the Social Liberals pro-immigration policy are every bit as much populism as DPP, it’s just populism for a different voter segment. I would say that SD, SPP, Venstre, Conservative and to lesser extent Unity List have immigration policies which are ideological coherent or pragmatic in nature. While the other parties either lack one (LA) or have a immigration policy building on emotions.

I strongly disagree with this. You need to look at the motivation behind taking a political stance. The "pro-immigration"-parties (which aren't really pro-immigration as much as they want immigrants to be treated decently) take these positions because that is what they believe. It is NOT a winning issue for them. Basically anybody who votes single-issue on being pro-immigration already votes for a left wing party.

The true swing voters in Denmark are working class voters with anti-immigration stances and pro-welfare state stances. The social democrats lost a huge chunk of those voters to the Danish Peoples Party and to Venstre since 2001. The radically changed immigration policies of the social democrats over the last few years has happened because they are sick and tired of losing elections due to this one issue. Any honest social democrat will tell you this.

[BlueSwan]

  I'm interested in the Social Democrats chances and their relations to the DPP. Do they basically agree with the DPP on the immigration issue, and would the DPP give support to a minority Social Democrat government?

The social democrats and Danish Peoples Party are not going to cooperate all that much. The flirtation has happened because in a way it is in both parties interests.

The Danish Peoples Party gain legitimacy from the party that used to trash them and gain influence over the center-right government by showing that they can't take them for granted.

The social democrats are trying to shut down the immigration issue and to win back working class voters that they have lost to the DPP and Venstre.

In reality those two parties won't work together very much. If after the election the center-right parties keep their majority (looks unlikely) the DPP will support another Venstre-lead government. If after the election the center-right parties have a majority (looks likely) we will almost certainly get a Social Democratic one-party government with support from the usual parties in the "red block", including the Social Liberals. A SD-DPP alliance won't happen because 1) it is not needed, 2) the DPP is a right-wing party, 3) the DPP is despised by a huge majority to the left of center.

[BlueSwan]

I think it's time for this topic. Elections will be held on 17 June. Looks like left wing coalition will win. Maybe forum Danes knows more.

June 17th is the latest that the election will be held, but it could be held at any time 3 weeks from now and until june 17th.

[BlueSwan]

 I'm interested in the Social Democrats chances and their relations to the DPP. Do they basically agree with the DPP on the immigration issue, and would the DPP give support to a minority Social Democrat government?

The main reason for the potential cooperation is a historical good personal relationship between the leadership in the two parties. But also that DPP voters are very tired of Venstre. SD and DPP doesn’t basically agree, but SD are only slightly to the left of Venstre on immigration, and much more in line with how DPP sell themselves on economic issue. Beside that DPP have a interest in keeping the Social Liberals away from influence, and SD are incredible tired of the Social Liberals right now, think it will be healthy to sideline them right now.

What would you say was behind this antipathy between SD and Radikale Venstre?

The latter are a bunch of smug moralizing selfserving a-holes. Of course they have always been that way, but under the last government the took it a step too far.

I would call this partisan hackery. The social democrats, and in particular Henrik Sass Larsen, had basically proclaimed that the Social Liberals would gain ZERO influence on a social democratic government after the 2011 elections. Of course, the Social Liberals demonstrated that that is no way to treat them. I would agree that perhaps they took it too far in terms of just flat out humiliating the social democrats, but outside of that they were just more competent when it comes to negotiating than the social democrats - can hardly fault them for that.

[BlueSwan]

In reality those two parties won't work together very much. If after the election the center-right parties keep their majority (looks unlikely) the DPP will support another Venstre-lead government. If after the election the center-right parties have a majority (looks likely) we will almost certainly get a Social Democratic one-party government with support from the usual parties in the "red block", including the Social Liberals. A SD-DPP alliance won't happen because 1) it is not needed, 2) the DPP is a right-wing party, 3) the DPP is despised by a huge majority to the left of center.

I think you are talking about two different things. Whether they will work together a lot, and who will officially be support parties. If the Red Bloc parties have a majority, then yes Frederiksen will likely become PM without even needing DPP support. However, the improved relationship with DPP means the Social Liberals would have a less significant strategic position. Especially if Social Democrats + DPP + SPP have their own majority after an election, one could easily imagine a budget and other significant reforms agreed between these three parties. Things will be more complicated if Red-Greens are needed, since DPP would likely push to include as much immigration policy as possible, but even in this scenario it is not completely unlikely. So it seems likely that S and DPP will work together a lot after the election as well. Whether DPP becomes an official support party at some point, largely depends on whether parties like Social Liberals and Alternative will accept being support parties while being kept largely out of influence in some areas. If they accept that role and take the wins in other policy areas, there is no need for DPP to officially support the government. Perhaps, we could even have a funny situation where DPP is support party for some ministers (justice, immigration etc.) in policy areas, where the minister is loudly and directly in conflict with some of the smaller centre-left parties.

The social liberals will indeed have much less influence than they are used to having, but this is mainly due to the following:

1) There isn't really a workable alternative majority. Since the DPP has moved decisively to the left on fiscal policy it is hard to imagine exactly which reforms the social liberals could threaten to do with the right.

2) Most major economic reforms have already been introduced. The national economy is in excellent shape. For that reason I think it will become more apparent that the social liberals are indeed a center-LEFT party and they will in general have less important issues to work with the right on.

I basically see a future in which the social liberals will have to accept a more modest role as supporting party for social democratic governments or as partners in coalition governments with the social democrats, but in a more humble manner than in the past. At least until another economic crisis hits.

The "good" relationship between the DPP and the social democrats is mostly for show. The social democrats can use the threat of the alternative majority with the DPP to make the rest of the red block parties behave and I predict that this will work so that the vast vast majority of initiatives will have support from a united red block and probably won't include the DPP who will be busy fighting the newer right wing radical parties on who can be most mean to muslims.

[BlueSwan]

Stram Kurs (Tough Line) has now gathered enough signatures to be on the ballot. The Ministry still needs to give its official approval of the signatures, the party will apply for a party letter and so on, but it should be quite safe to say that they will be on the ballot. To DR, Rasmus Paludan says that he will probably run in Southern Jutland (because people there know too well how it is to live under foreign rule), but could end up opting for Zealand because he lives there. These two are also the biggest constituencies (and with many DPP voters), so it's probably where he would have the best chance of winning a constituency seat.
He says their first choice as PM is himself. Second choice would be the person, who to the biggest degree wants to fulfil the party's goal of banning islam and initiating mass-scale deportations.
He states he won't make Quran stunts to the election debates, since he is a guest who behaves politely. But the party itself will still arrange Quran shows to illustrate the problem of a lack of free speech regarding Islam, and the violent attacks from many immigrants.

Videoes from the party's main communication channel, Youtube, can be seen here. This is mainly from Paludan's Quran shows and demonstrations: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4x-CILeIrI5vVk3T11KaVQ/videos

The way things are going, it would no longer be surprising if a full blown nazi party gets on the ballot for the election after this one. The muslim fearmongering is running completely out of control in Denmark. It's classic scapegoat politics and it seems to have no end in sight.

[BlueSwan]

Might be worth it just to do a post summing up all the parties.

I'll do a very rough summary:

Blue Bloc:
Venstre: The classic pragmatic center-left party, that is always seeking power. Calls itself liberal, but might as well call itself conservative as they are more like for instance the german CDU than they are like classical liberal parties. Historically aligned with farmers and rural areas.

Conservatives: Often indistinguishable from Venstre day-to-day given the same pragmatic tendency, but with more emphasis on classic conservative issues like law & order and defense-spending. These days the conservatives are to the right of Venstre on economic issues, but a few decades ago it was the other way around.

Liberal Alliance: In essense, mostly an economically rightwing party. Early on there was a push to be more of a true libertarian party with leftwing social positions, but that has pretty much evaporated or at least is not afforded any focus whatsoever. This is why they have been able to accept the anti-immigration line of the blue bloc in general.

Danish Peoples Party: Started as a true protest right-wing party both socially and economically, but discovered over time that most of their potential voters would be attracted to a mix of starchly conservative social views and more economically populist views. In essense they are primarily known for their immigration policies, but they are also rather pragmatic, meaning that while they have avoided becoming a governing party, they have been willing to compromise on a number of issues to further their anti-immigration agenda.

New right: Basically, the DPP left an opening to the right when they moved to the center economically and the New Right tries to fill that opening as a pure right wing party - more or less the position filled by the DPP and its parent party (The progress party) in the 1990's.

Tough line: Basically a populist semi-fascist anti-immigration party a step or two away from pure nazism. Basically wants Apartheid policies in Denmark.

The Christian democrats: Humanist christian conservative party that does not like the anti-immigration stances of the rest of the blue bloc. Has a tough time getting more than 2% of the vote given the fact that danes aren't particularly religious and generally pro-abortion.

Klaus Riskær Pedersen: A strange mish-mash of ideas that are neither clearly rightwing or clearly leftwing. I probably couldn't do it justice in a few words. Cllearly lacks a "key issue" that can elevate the party, which is mostly defined by its leader (hence, the name of the party).


Red bloc:
Social democrats: Super pragmatic center-left party of the scandinavian social democratic position where socialist policies have basically been abandoned in favour of fine tuning a mixed economy welfare state. In recent years they have adopted most of the anti-immigration stances of the blue bloc, more or less due to being sick and tired of losing elections on this single issue. If an election is held on the welfare state, the red bloc almost certainly wins as certainly as they lose elections held on immigration.

The social liberals: Reformist center-left party, staunchly left-wing on social issues and centrists on economic issues. They are NOT a right-wing party on economic issues, which is often wrongfully assumed. The social liberals do not think high taxes are unfair, like most blue bloc parties. The party only wants to lower taxes if it is deemed advantageous for the overall economy. The default position of the party is to work with social democrats. They have two times in history supported blue bloc governments (1968-1971 and 1982-1993), but both of those scenarios required some special circumstances to happen and a loooot has happened since then.

The social peoples party: These days, the identity of this party is basically like the social democrats only a bit more to the left on all issues. It is still a fairly pragmatic party though, but the party for you if you think the social democrats aren't socialist enough.

The red-green alliance: The true socialist party in Denmark, only recently abandoning the idea of an actual revolution. But it's the only party who believe in abandoning the market economy. But like most established danish parties, they can be fairly pragmatic in daily dealings, even if they don't seem to be so.

The alternative: Break-off party from the social liberals who were a bit fed up with the economic pragmatism of the parent party. Their main issues are climate change and thinking outside of the box with ideas like universal basic income.

[BlueSwan]

The social liberals: Reformist center-left party, staunchly left-wing on social issues and centrists on economic issues. They are NOT a right-wing party on economic issues, which is often wrongfully assumed. The social liberals do not think high taxes are unfair, like most blue bloc parties. The party only wants to lower taxes if it is deemed advantageous for the overall economy. The default position of the party is to work with social democrats. They have two times in history supported blue bloc governments (1968-1971 and 1982-1993), but both of those scenarios required some special circumstances to happen and a loooot has happened since then.

Unlike the Blue Bloc parties who only wants to lover taxes to be evil

No. The distinction I'm making is this:

A lot of leftwing parties want high progressive taxes because they believe in income equality.

A lot of rightwing parties want low taxes because they believe in individual freedom and hence view income redistribution to be problematic.

The social liberal part in Denmark generally follow the Rawlsian principle that you should only introduce the level of inequality that benefits those worst off. This is missed by all of those who regard the social liberal party as rightwing economically. They are not. I was a member of that party for a couple of decades and I literally never met anybody in the party who regarded the high taxes as unfair. Likewise, the social liberals never support cutting the levels of unemployment subsidies (or whatever it is called in english) or similar benefits.

[BlueSwan]

The social liberal part in Denmark generally follow the Rawlsian principle that you should only introduce the level of inequality that benefits those worst off. This is missed by all of those who regard the social liberal party as rightwing economically. They are not. I was a member of that party for a couple of decades and I literally never met anybody in the party who regarded the high taxes as unfair. Likewise, the social liberals never support cutting the levels of unemployment subsidies (or whatever it is called in english) or similar benefits.

Too bad, the professors in the party forget all their rationality and Rawlsian principles when it comes to immigration I sensed your affinity for the party, and we all talk highly of our own preferred party. But it is quite understable why many see them as right-wing economically, since they have made a number of deals with the right wing on economy in recent years, on cutting the length one can get unemployment benefits and removing the standard early retirement scheme. In government, they led the way on tougher conditions for people on cash benefits, early retirement and flexijobs and strict budget restrictions for municipalities and regions as well as cutting taxes for companies and raising the limit for when you have to pay top tax. And now their proposals include raising the retirement age, cutting the top tax level and lowering the earnings limits non-EU immigrants have to reach to be allowed to come and work. And I'm not against many of these things, but it is understable why most people regard them as quite right wing on economy, whether they argue based on freedom or rationality. And most centre-right parties also use rationality logic quite a lot; e.g. there is a reason why Liberal Alliance have focused so much on getting the Finance Ministry to calculate its proposals which show higher growth, employment etc. Something they often refer to.

The reason the liberal alliance has gotten the finance ministry to calculate their proposals is because they are well aware that the way the models are designed, cutting governement spending to lower taxes will ALWAYS lead to a good outcome. This is a key problem with economic models that they do not calculate the benefits of government spending on things like education, child daycare, etc. Basically, if the government cut education spending in half, the models would predict wonderful things for the danish economy going forward, which is obviously nonsense.

There is no doubt that the liberal alliance believe that their proposals are economically beneficial, but they also strongly believe that high taxation is UNFAIR, just like the left believes that income inequality is UNFAIR. When people hold a strong moral belief they tend to rationalize that their belief will also be best for everyone involved, hence the left will argue that people will be super productive when everybody is equal and the right will argue that people will be super productive when taxation is very low.

This is the real difference between those with an ideological view on taxes and those with a pragmatic view on taxes. The social liberals are super pragmatic when it comes to economic policy, something which I do not equate to being "right wing".

[BlueSwan]

It is very hard not to see the latest events as complete desperation on behalf of Venstre. Rehashing the taxation-stop, trying out be completely similar to the social democrats on economic policies and then trying to make everything about immigration. It is a recipe that worked in the 00's and I understand why they are trying it again, but there is a difference in using that strategy from a position of strength, which Anders Fogh Rasmussen had then, and emplying the same strategy from a position of utter desperation. Also, the social democrats are no longer seen as soft on immigration, which is probably the entire key to understanding the shift in bloc support.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[BlueSwan]

Any chance of a grand coalition? It seems like the Liberals and Social Democrats are closer to each other than they are to their coalition partners on the issue of the day and they're not too far from each other on economic issues either. Knowing American left-wing activists, I also have a hard time in particular believing that the Red-Greens are going to be cooperative with a party as immigration skeptic as the Social Democrats. It would be weird though, there's a lot of grand coalitions in Europe these days but they're usually the polar opposite of what I'm proposing here, they're usually economically liberal, pro-immigration, whereas this could shape up to be a grand coalition that's economically moderate, anti-immigration.

There is a close to zero procent chance of this happening.

One could point to our neighboring countries, Germany and Sweden, as examples of this happening, but in both those cases the side that got the parliamentary majority had parties that they could not work with on their side of the aisle.

That is not the case in Denmark. The red bloc parties are all reasonably pragmatic when all is said and done. The red-green alliance have always supported social democratic governments and will do so again.

Also, we need to understand that while Venstre and Social Democrats may appear alike, they really are not alike at all. They are both pragmatic parties but with completely different underlying ideologies. A social democrat will typically feel more ideologically aligned with someone from the red-green alliance than with someone from Venstre.

[BlueSwan]

What happened with Johannne Schmidt-Niellsen? She wasnt on the list?

No, as mentioned earlier in the thread, she is the new leader of Save the Children in Denmark. Red-Green Alliance has a rotation principle, so you can't be a parliamentary candidate after having been in parliament for seven years straight. They also have some rules for parliamentary employees and board members.

This rotation principle also means that the current leader, Pernille Skipper, can't run next election. The red-green alliance are really making things difficult for themselves with this principle. This election also saw the loss of by far their strongest MP on financial matters (something often neglected by the left wing), Palle Dragsted. So far the party has been quite succesful in constantly finding new talented people to put in front, but I wonder how long that will last. I'm not sure when they will make the next leadership change, but seeing that Skipper can't run next time, surely they will have to do so quite soon.

[BlueSwan]

What happened with Johannne Schmidt-Niellsen? She wasnt on the list?

No, as mentioned earlier in the thread, she is the new leader of Save the Children in Denmark. Red-Green Alliance has a rotation principle, so you can't be a parliamentary candidate after having been in parliament for seven years straight. They also have some rules for parliamentary employees and board members.

This rotation principle also means that the current leader, Pernille Skipper, can't run next election. The red-green alliance are really making things difficult for themselves with this principle. This election also saw the loss of by far their strongest MP on financial matters (something often neglected by the left wing), Palle Dragsted. So far the party has been quite succesful in constantly finding new talented people to put in front, but I wonder how long that will last. I'm not sure when they will make the next leadership change, but seeing that Skipper can't run next time, surely they will have to do so quite soon.

I usual don't defend the Unity List, but I think the concept make a lot of sense for them. Unity List doesn't have the same need for institutional knowledge as parties closer to the center of power, so not a lot is lost on that issue. Also the rotation princip force the Unity List to work on their talent mass, if it hadn't been for that princip we wouldn't have seen Rosenkrantz-Theil, Schmidt-Nielsen and Skipper (of course we would also have avoided Asmaa), instead we would have seen the party's parlimental group being dominated by fossils from the seventies. It's quite likely that Unity List would have disappeared if not for that princip.

I do see your point, but even a wing party needs some expertise. As I wrote, I think the loss of Pelle Dragsted is actually bigger than the loss of Johanne. The left is in DIRE need of people with insight into fiscal policy and macroeconomics. I hope he runs again next time.