All the votes in metropolitan Denmark had been counted, when the left bloc was appointed 84 seats in the 179-seat parliament, and the right one 77, whereas 90 is required to constitute a majority.

The Moderate party, led by the Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, emerged as kingmaker with 14 seats, and bitter negotiations are likely to continue in the coming weeks in an effort to compile a coalition government.

In 2019, Frederiksen, already in power, announced to supporters cheering her that she was now going to assume the challenge of serving as Denmark’s prime minister again in the following four years.

She added, though, that the process of creating a government will not be smooth sailing.

Right after, Lokke had remarked that he wanted to witness a cross-bloc coalition – despite all three parties of the historically left-right government led by Frederiksen losing their ground during the election.

“We must not be divided. We must not be red (left-wing). We must not be blue (right-wing). You see, we must work together,” he said.

Troels Lund Poulsen, a Liberal party coalition partner, dismissed any idea of another government with the Social Democrats.

“You can either have a government that is centre-right, or we go into opposition,” he said to his followers.

Far-right rise

Frederiksen, who was viewed as the favourite ahead of the elections, has been acclaimed to have strong leadership qualities after withstanding the unremitting requests by US President Donald Trump to annex Greenland, a Danish autonomous region, which he believes the United States needs due to national security issues.

During the election day, the prime minister visited part of Aalborg, where she had a stronghold in the country, specifically in the northwest of Denmark, with the Greenlanders in Denmark.

The Social Democrats, traditionally the largest party in Denmark, received only 21.8 per cent of the vote, their worst result since 1903, and it was 27.5 per cent in 2022.

“We thought we were going to lose ground. It is natural when you are running a third time,” Frederiksen admitted.

“Naturally, I would have rather got more votes.”

Green Left leader Pia Olsen Dyhr said in the meantime that her party, with its historic high score (as it now ranked as the second-largest party on the left), had received a mandate in the hands of Danes, and she was now willing to negotiate.

“We need to put welfare first; we need to put green transition first. And when we cannot do that, then we will not go into government. Then we will be in opposition.”

The anti-immigration Danish People’s Party, which has dominated policy since the late 1990s but dropped in the 2022 election, increased its outcome more than three times to 9.1 per cent of votes.

The party leader, Morten Messerschmidt, told the AFP, “A tripling of the votes is an incredible show of the Danish people in favour of my party.”

“We are all waiting now to see what will happen in France, we are waiting to see what is happening in Hungary, in the Netherlands and of course, not the last of all and of course, the United Kingdom with Nigel Farage.”

‘Serious situation’

In Denmark, two of its autonomous territories, two in Greenland, where votes are yet to be counted, and two in the Faroe Islands, one bloc to each, have four seats in the parliament.

Greenland has been experiencing unusual interest in the election campaign, and 27 candidates are running, seeking the two seats.

Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen in Nuuk told AFP that he believed it was the most crucial election in the Danish parliament in Greenland in history.

“We are living in an era where we have a superpower that is making attempts to acquire us, take us, and control us,” he added and emphasised that the territory is in a very serious situation.

The most significant aspect that the parties in Greenland have adopted, he said, is that they have to work together, whoever it is that will be elected into the parliament.

In Denmark, the debate surrounding the huge Arctic Island has been peripheral in the campaign, with the focus put on domestic matters such as inflation, the welfare state, the environment and immigration.

“The election has also demonstrated that a very broad majority of the new Folketing still supported a strict immigration policy in Denmark,” she said.

“We have to regulate the number of people arriving here.”