Jacob Christensen

I wrote this summary for the PSA’s Scandinavian Politics Specialist Group. A print version is here.

Summary

Tuesday’s election, called by Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen on 24 October, ended with a surprising, but narrow win for the governing Liberal-Conservative coalition and its parliamentary ally the Danish People’s Party. Even though the Liberal Party suffered some losses, the coalition and its partner still hold 89 of the 175 seats in parliament which with the conditional support of one MP elected on the Faroe Islands gives the government the slimmest of working majorities.

The election was a triumph for the Socialist Party which after nearly two decades of decline celebrated its best result since 1988 and to a lesser degree the Danish People’s Party which against all predictions not only gained 0,5 percentage points compared with the 2005 election – itself a significant triumph for the party – but also still holds the crucial parliamentary votes needed for the government.

In terms of votes, the election was a major defeat for the Social Liberal Party which saw all of the gains from the 2005 election wiped out while the Social Democrats also recorded losses. Viewed in isolation, the 2007 result was the party’s worst performance since the 1906 election when the Social Democrats held 25,4% of the vote.

The election was also a major disappointment to the New Alliance party which was formed in May by members of the Social Liberal, Liberal and Conservative Parties to bring about a change in cooperation patterns in parliament. The party not only saw its share of the vote fall well below expectations – opinion polls in the early part of the campaign suggested that the party would stand to gain 5-6% of the vote – it also failed to capture the median position in the Folketing, minimising its chances of influencing tax and immigration policies.

Finally, turn-out – traditionally high in Denmark – was up from 84,4 to 86,5%. This is slightly surprising as the campaign was very short and lacked an overriding theme.

As there is no majority against the present government in the new Folketing, the government will not resign. Instead, Anders Fogh Rasmussen invited to a round of consultations with the Danish People’s Party and New Alliance on Wednesday.

As the counting of the personal votes (usually around 50% of votes are cast as personal votes) hasn’t finished at the time of writing, I won’t comment that distribution.

The Campaign

When Anders Fogh Rasmussen called the election on 24 October, he ended nearly six months’ of speculations and rumours about an early election. Political commentators and politicians already expected an election in September but preparations were aborted when the government entered an agreement about tax cuts with the Danish People’s Party. A minor government reshuffle also indicated that an election had been postponed for some time.

Fogh Rasmussen motivated the election with the need to create support for the government’s quality reform drive and to counter excessive demands for pay rises in the public sector but neither issue played a central role in the campaign. Instead, a number of issues promoted by different parties competed for the voters’ attention while a poll conducted by Gallup suggested that the voters’ political agenda had changed from 2001 and 2005, where immigration and health care were central themes, to an emphasis on general social policy and welfare.

The campaign was also characterised by a number of policy reversals among the opposition parties.

The Social Liberals and Socialists gave up their fundamental opposition to the so-called “24-year-clause” which is one of several rules limiting the right for spouses and relatives to enter Denmark, while the Social Democrats promised to cancel their participation in a primary education agreement with the government which introduced a series of national tests for primary school pupils.

These reversals, on the one hand, removed a number of stumbling blocks in the cooperation between Social Democrats, Socialists and Social Liberals. On the other hand, they also raised questions about the internal and external stability of these parties’ policy positions.

The government’s campaign was more subdued and focused on the need to continue the welfare and immigration policies introduced since 2001. A bizarre element of the campaign was that voters, when asked,found it easier to remember the Social Democrats’ pledges than the governments’. This recognition factor still didn’t help the Social Democrats.

Compared with earlier elections, the Danish People’s Party also kept a relatively low profile with the party’s campaign film presenting an idyllic rural Denmark under threat from Islamist terrorism as the high point. On the other hand, the party already had carried out a massive poster and newspaper campaign during the late summer and early autumn emphasising a number of “Danish values” and the party’s commitment to pursuing them in day-to-day politics. To the DPP, the election campaign could be seen as a continuation of the values campaign.

The left-wing Unity List had drawn a lot of attention both before and during the campaign because of the party’s nomination of social worker Asmaa Abdol-Hamid as one of its top candidates in Copenhagen. Abdol-Hamid, who is of Palestinian origin, had been the object of much internal and external criticism because she emphasised her religious views (She conspicuously wears a head-scarf and refuses to shake hands with men). The Unity List had lost support during the summer but whether the decision to field Ms. Abdol-Hamid played the decisive role remains to be seen. The party may have gained some of the immigrant vote in the election as Muslim leaders endorsed her candidacy.

Finally, the New Alliance party showed itself to be somewhat accident-prone during the campaign. The party which had only been formed in May and was in the process of creating a proper membership organisation was rushed into picking candidates and this lack of preparation showed in a number of un-coordinated initiatives by several of the high-profile candidates nominated by the party.

Basically, the party ran on three issues – reducing the Danish People’s Party’s influence over government policies, more liberal immigration and integration policies and a tax reform reducing top-bracket income tax rates significantly – but found it difficult to deliver its message. That the party’s most prominent figure, Naser Khader, became involved in a conflict with the editor of the illustrated weekly Henrik Qvortrup, a former advisor to Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and handled the situation less convincingly only added to the party’s misfortunes.

A Short Preliminary Analysis

One thing which is worth noting about the election result, is that if New Alliance is counted as a part of the government bloc, the balance of power between the main blocs didn’t change between 2005 and 2007: After the 2007 election, Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the government can count on 94 MPs, while Helle Thorning Schmidt can count on 81 MPs. All net movement took place within the political blocs – this of cause allows for quite a lot of gross movement both within and across blocs.

Second, given the lack of an overriding issue in the campaign, the increase in turn-out is interesting. Commentators have suggested that New Alliance may have played a role here by targeting the Danish People’s Party in its electoral propaganda. That, in turn, could have motivated DPP supporters to turn out in higher numbers than expected. The fact that the DPP was only marginally under its 2005 result in many opinion polls during the campaign should also have served as an indication that the DPP would make a strong performance at the polls.

Third, even if immigration wasn’t a major issue in the campaign – though there was some discussion about the handling of Iraqi asylum seekers which had been denied a permanent stay in Denmark and the DPP made what it could from Asmaa Abdol-Hamid’s candidacy, the Danish People’s Party still made a strong performance and even gained vote shares compared with 2005. The DPP is an anti-immigration party but its electoral success also builds on a strong position in social policy issues.

Fourth, I suspect that this election confirmed that we now have a leftist parallel to the “general rightist” voter which has long been a feature of Danish politics.

The “general rightist” voter is a voter which has a clear position on the left-right scale without being particularly committed to any particular party. In this way “general rightists” would float between Liberals, Conservatives, Christian Democrats, Social Liberals (when they positioned themselves on or to the right of the centre) and the now-defunct Centre Democrats. Similarly, the “general leftist” will flow between Social Democrats, Socialists and Social Liberals – and to a lesser degree the Unity List. In 2005, the Social Liberals won the hearts and votes of the “general leftists”, in 2007 the Socialists did the same.

This mobility isn’t primarily a protest vote. Rather, research has shown that many Danish voters generally have strong second and third preferences when it comes to parties. The Unity List and the Danish People’s Party are the only parties existing outside of this general consensus.

Fifth, the indication is that the electorate identified with the Social Democrats’ policies without voting for the party. One reason was the strong performance of the Socialist Party (see under “general leftist”), another that the Liberals and the Danish People’s Party managed to hold on to potential swing voters. I’m looking forward to seeing a break-down of voter movements involving the Liberals. The Social Democrats are not in a hopeless position but need to review their strategies.

Finally, the weak performance of New Alliance merits attention. Given the original polls, I would have expected the party to win 4-6% of the vote and 2,8% is well below the expectations of both external observers and the party itself.

Outlook

Predicting anything in Danish politics is notoriously difficult but the coming parliamentary term may be rather more uncomfortable for the government than the 2001-2005 and 2005-2007 terms.

The government will be operating on a very narrow majority after the election. Experience has shown that the Danish People’s Party usually lose one or more MPs during an electoral term and there are also significant disagreements between the government and the DPP on a number of policy issues that will reach the political agenda in the coming year, most significantly the adoption of the new EU treaty and pay for social and health care workers.

The government can count on the Social Democrats, New Alliance and the Social Liberals to support the EU treaty, but the Social Democrats in particular may feel less obliged to help the government in controlling wage negotiations. More generally, the government may be exposed to a lot of demands for higher public expenditure on a lot of areas related to education, health care and social policy while finding it difficult to reach political agreements in parliament.

The negotiations about the 2008 Budget, due to begin very soon, will be an interesting indicator of things to come.

The Social Democratic leadership also faces interesting tasks. After a long period with internal conflicts and after losing at least two generations of experienced politicians during the last terms, the party are now left with a new, relatively united group of front-bench politicians which will have to formulate a programme for the next election which can position the party as a contender for government.

The early election and the electoral set-back could turn out to be blessings-in-disguise for Helle Thorning Schmidt: Either the next election will be on the background of a conflict between the government and the Danish People’s Party or it will be 3 years out in the future, giving her time to reassess and revise the party’s policies and strategies. At the same time, she will have a crew of politicians who have not been brought up in the belief in Social Democratic hegemony but exposed to a much more competitive situation on the electoral and parliamentary arenas.

The almost final result at 23:30

Turn-out: 86,6% (2005: 84,4%; 2001: 87,1%)

Source: Danmarks Radio

Liberals + Conservatives + Danish People’s: 89 seats (88 needed for a majority without North Atlantic seats)
Social Democrats + Socialists + Unity List: 81 seats
New Alliance: 5 seats

Election Day, originally uploaded by malouette.

Berlingske Tidende/Gallup’s and Politiken/Synovate Vilstrup’s predictions on the day. They differ slightly.

Noted by an internet contact: When it comes to party leaders, women outnumber men in Denmark!

• Unity List – collective leadership but mainly represented by Line Barfoed and Johanne Schmidt Nielsen
• Socialists – Villy Søvndal
• Social Democrats – Helle Thorning Schmidt
• Social Liberals – Margrethe Vestager
• Christian Democrats – Bodil Kornbæk
• New Alliance – Naser Khader (re: party leadership – a little complicated here)
• Liberals – Anders Fogh Rasmussen
• Conservatives – Bendt Bendtsen (not unlikely that he will be succeeded by a woman)
• Danish People’s Party – Pia Kjærsgaard

That makes five parties led or represented by women against four represented by men. In terms of electoral support, it’s more or less fifty/fifty.

You will of cause have noted the left-right tendency.

The Danish news bureau Ritzau pulls the big one and asks: Are you ready to party like it’s 1998? (Meaning: A really, really, really close race between the blocs)

Also: Matthew Shugart has a post explaining the Danish electoral system.

Gallup and Berlingske Tidende rushed to publish their last opinion poll before the election. Before commenting this, I would note that opinion polls actually vary quite a bit – and you will also note some big jumps from 12 to 13 November here – so some polls have the Unity List safely in parliament while Gallup has the list well below 2% of the vote. Other polls also show that NA still hold the balance after the election while Gallup for all practical purposes condemns the new party to parliamentary irrelevance.

But here goes. First the groups of parties, I usually work with: The “Far Left” (Unity List + Socialists), the “Left” (Social Democrats), the “Centre” (Social Liberals, Christian Democrats and New Alliance), the “Right (Liberals and Conservatives) and the “Far Right” (Danish People’s Party):

The main tendency is that the Centre peaked early in the campaign but has been in serious decline ever since. It is a little hard to see on the figure, but the Right has been the main winner. Short interpretation: The government has managed to pull back the protest vote going to New Alliance.

Then the individual parties:

(Don’t ask me why the dates disappeared. You should never argue with a spreadsheet)

This is a little intriguing. Note that the Conservatives seem to claw back a lot of lost support but then collapses in the last observation. Liberals and Danish People’s Party look like last-minute winners.

New Alliance had a good first week in the campaign but then started a dramatic slide. The Social Liberals also peaked in the first week before starting their slide. The decline of the Social Liberals is a little less dramatic, but if Gallup is anything to go by, the party might want to evaluate its performance during the campaign.

The Socialist Party reached its peak during the last week of the campaign and may be on a slight decline in support. The Unity List is hovering around the 2% limit during the campaign – but I’ll make a reservation here: As noted in an earlier post, the immigrant vote may be a joker in the election.

And finally, in case you want to laugh at me, be stunned by my prescience or whatever. On 30 October, I made this prediction in a mail to a friend:

• Socialists – strong gains, partly taken from the Social Democrats, partly in the form of voters returning after voting for the Social Liberals in 2005
• New Alliance – enters parliament with somewhere around 10 seats and holds the balance
• Danish People’ Party – roughly the same result as in 2005
• Social Liberal Party – loses and get around 10 seats (see under Socialists)
• Liberal Party – loses some seats, voters go to NA and SocDem
• Social Democrats – lose some seats due to SP’s win
• Conservative Party – minor losses
• Unity List – enters parliament
• Overall result: LP-CP-DPP-NA majority. Anders Fogh Rasmussen continues as Prime Minister

Sometimes finding the proper terminology can be tricky: Should we talk about “immigrant candidates”, “candidates with an ethnic background” (obviously, Danes are not ethnic), “New-Danes” (I’m not making this one up) or what?

Anyway, the 2001 election saw the first immigrant/ethnic/New-Danish candidates elected to the Danish Folketing: Naser Khader (Palestinian) for the Social Liberals and Kamal Qureshi (Pakistani) for the Socialist Party. The first [insert adjective] to serve in parliament was Lone Yalcinkaya (Turkish) who was a deputy member for Mimi Jakobsen in 2000. Hüseyn Arac (Turkish) was elected for the Social Democrats in 2005.

This time, Asmaa Abdol-Hamid (Unity List, Palestinian) and Naser Khader (now of New Alliance) have drawn most of the media attention but there are three other women who may be elected on Tuesday and who may even stand a better chance than Abdol-Hamid: Yildiz Akdogan (Turkish, Social Democrats), Özlem Sara Cekic (Kurdish, Socialists) and Lone Yalcinkaya (Turkish, now a Liberal candidate).

One thing worth noting is the apparent absence of candidates (male or female) with a background in ex-Yugoslavia.

Oh, and pollsters have a problem with immigrant groups. It is not unlikely that polls have underestimated support for the Unity List (and the Socialists?)

I haven’t tracked the foreign media coverage of the Danish election systematically but here are some articles that have ticked in on my rss-reader:

Dagens Nyheter from Sweden (or Stockholm, to be more precise): “Projektet ligger fast” (Editorial from 11 November focusing on immigration policy using the “Ugly Dane, Righteous Swede” juxaposition and contradicted by one of their own correspondents)

Svenska Dagbladet thinks that social policy and public sector wages were at the centre of the campaign.

The Guardian sees Naser Khader and Asmaa Abdol-Hamid as the most interesting figures in the campaign.

And so does Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Finally, the New York Times also focuses on immigration policy with a profile of Minister for Social Affairs Karen Jespersen.

So there you have it: If this sample is anything to go by, foreign media have concentrated on immigration policy while Danish media have focused on social policy and possible majorities after the election.

Update: Some Austrian links in the comments. And lest we forget: The Economist, Die Zeit.

This may not have been the most inspired of campaigns but according to DR, viewer numbers for election broadcasts in general and yesterday’s final televised debate have been higher than for the 2005 campaign.

According to a report – whose url I unforgivably haven’t saved – the number of postal votes were about the same this year as in 2005. That would indicate a turn-out of around 85%.

Besides Saturday’s spy story – whose effects remains to be seen – local income taxes became a major issue during the final stage of the campaign.

To make a long story short, local councils have overshot the targets for taxes and spending laid down in an agreement between the government and the Confederation of Local Councils. As it was, the government should have capped councils’ tax rates and budgets but on Friday, the government declared that it would instead offset the local tax rises by lowering state income taxes.

The move left economic observers concerned about the effects of the fiscal policy – they fear that further expansion of an already expansive fiscal policy will make the Danish economy unstable in the medium term – but it can be seen as another proof of the defensive nature of much of this year’s campaigning.

Finally, Naser Khader yields to pressure and will not call for the government’s resignation and a new round of negotiations after the election.

The European Union? Er – let’s talk about that … later.

Nah – I’m taking a day off. Tonight is the big all-party candidates’ debate and then the campaign will wind down on Monday. My guess is that we will see some pretty intense last-minute campaigning this time.