Danish PM's party wins election, but no majority

Denmark’s Social Democrats, led by Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, finished first in Tuesday's general election but posted their weakest showing in more than 120 years and the left-wing bloc failed to secure a majority.

- Camille Bas Wohlert, Agence France-Presse

With all votes counted in metropolitan Denmark, the left bloc was credited with 84 seats in the 179-seat parliament and the right with 77, while 90 are needed for a majority. The centrist Moderate party, headed by Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, became kingmaker with 14 seats, and thorny negotiations are expected in the coming weeks to build a coalition government.

Frederiksen, who has been in office since 2019, told cheering supporters that she was “ready to take on the responsibility of serving as Denmark's prime minister again for the next four years”. She noted however that “there is little to suggest that forming a government will be easy.”

Moments earlier, Lokke said he wanted to see a cross-bloc coalition — even though all three parties in Frederiksen’s unprecedented left-right government in power since 2022 lost ground in the election. “We must not be divided. We must not be red (left-wing). We must not be blue (right-wing). We have to work together,” he said.