But just a day before Tuesday’s elections in Denmark, a right-leaning and a left-leaning bloc are nearly tied with each other in the polls, both just short of a majority in the country’s 179-seat parliament. Rasmussen’s Moderates, meanwhile, are projected to secure 12 seats.
That sets him up to either backstop Frederiksen to form another broadly centrist government, or hand power to Deputy PM Troels Lund Poulsen, leader of the center-right Venstre party and the preferred PM candidate of the right-wing bloc.
Frederiksen is using that reality to nudge voters towards supporting her. “If [Rasmussen] chooses to back another prime minister, then we will, with a very high possibility, get a right-wing government in Denmark,” she said recently.
Mette doesn’t define me
For the past four years, Frederiksen’s Social Democrats have governed in coalition with Venstre and Rasmussen’s Moderates — the latter named after a fictional political group in the hit Danish political drama, “Borgen.”
The government’s right-leaning policies on migration, which are among the most hardline in Europe, and the lack of action on issues like the housing crisis were cited as key factors in the Social Democrats’ disastrous results in December’s nationwide municipal elections.
In the wake of those votes, members of the party’s base called for Frederiksen to recalibrate and prioritize working with left-leaning parties. But the prime minister has kept her options open ahead of March 24, saying she can imagine a repeat partnership with “the political middle” as easily as an alliance with the left.