Denmark’s Social Democrats are in pole position to take power in Wednesday’s general election after adopting a much tougher stance on one of the campaign’s key issues: immigration.
Surveys captured in POLITICO’s poll of polls put the party first with around 26 percent support, ahead of the Liberal Party of current Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen with around 20 percent support.
The bloc of parties backing the Social Democrat leader Mette Frederiksen to be the next prime minister is about 10 percentage points clear of the bloc backing Rasmussen to continue.
After they lost the 2015 election to Rasmussen and his allies in the far-right anti-immigration Danish People’s Party, the Social Democrats continued to position themselves as guarantors of Denmark’s extensive welfare state, advocating high taxes and high state spending on public services.
At the same time, the party moved sharply toward the DPP on immigration policy, signing off on several government initiatives to tighten border controls.
The Social Democrats backed a government proposal to confiscate valuables such as jewelry from asylum seekers in order to offset the costs to the state of their stay in Denmark. It also backed a move to stop refugees arriving in the country under the U.N.’s quota system.
“We believe that it is very important for Denmark that we continue with a firm and realistic immigration policy,” Nicolai Wammen, a senior Social Democrat lawmaker and former minister, told POLITICO in an interview. “We recognize that Denmark has a responsibility to assist people in need, but we are also aware that there are limits to how many people we can receive, if we are to maintain our welfare state and have an immigration policy that works.”
People’s Party squeezed
Overall, the Social Democrats’ new stance on immigration appears to be paying off, experts say.
It is costing the party support among voters who object to its new harder line, but those voters are largely moving to its allies: Support for the left-leaning Socialist People’s Party and Red-Green Alliance is up.
Meanwhile, support for the Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti, also called DK or DPP) has halved to around 10 percent from around 20 percent in 2015.
“The Social Democrats are attracting former DPP voters,” said Rune Stubager, a political scientist at Aarhus University. “At the same time, they are losing supporters to the left.”
The Danish People’s Party has also been hit by the emergence of two parties, the New Right and the Hard Line (Stram Kurs), which advocate even tighter immigration policies than the DPP.
The DK lost three of its four seats in the European Parliament in May’s election.
On the streets of Copenhagen, Robert Sonne, a 65-year-old musician, said immigration had clearly been central to the campaign.
“The Social Democrats have tightened up their proposals a bit, we’ll have to see if it works,” he said. “It is such a difficult question, it is hard to know what the best way is.”
Posters with the faces of local candidates were plastered all over town. The main local television stations were setting up infrastructure outside the parliament building.
Robert Stenbäck, a 19-year-old student, said it has been striking how far to the right the Social Democrats have moved their immigration policy.
“It is very weird to see,” he said. “It has really changed things, it is not at all what we expected from them.”
Stenbäck said he didn’t much like the change and would be voting for The Alternative party, which is further to the left.
Nordic revival
If the Social Democrats win in Wednesday’s election, Frederiksen said she plans to try to form a one-party minority government and seek support from the left and right.
“We are campaigning for a new direction for Denmark. We are therefore campaigning for a new Social Democrat minority government,” Frederiksen told reporters on Tuesday.
Political scientist Stubager suggested this could be difficult.
“Negotiations are likely to be tough as the left-wing parties are demanding concessions, including on immigration; the process is likely to take several weeks, if not more,” he said.
A Social Democrat win would represent a rare success in Europe for left-of-center parties, which have struggled with waning support in countries such as France, Germany and Italy in recent years.
It would, however, be further evidence that the political left is enjoying something of a revival in its Nordic heartland, even if it remains well short of its former glory.
Left-leaning prime ministers now have the reins in Iceland and Sweden, and won a recent election in Finland. Norway’s Labor Party won the most votes in the last election two years ago, but failed to form a coalition that could take power.
While the polls have been in the Danish Social Democrats’ favor in the run-up to Wednesday, lawmaker Wammen said he still believed it would be a tight result in the end.
The party came in second behind the Liberals in the European election.
“We are taking absolutely nothing for granted,” Wammen said.