• The center-left and center-right are unlikely to win 90 seats in the 179-seat Folketing.
• That might make a former prime minister who formed a new party a kingmaker.
• Tax cuts and hiring more nurses to support Danes have dominated the campaign.

Denmark’s national election has begun, with new parties aiming to enter parliament and others losing support.

The center-left and center-right are unlikely to win 90 seats in the 179-seat Folketing. That might make a former prime minister who formed a new party this year a kingmaker whose votes are needed to build a new government.

Four million Danish voters have 14 party options. Tax cuts and hiring more nurses to support Danes amid inflation and rising energy prices due to Russia’s all-out conflict in Ukraine have dominated the campaign.

Three politicians want to be prime minister. They include Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who led Denmark through the COVID-19 epidemic and worked with the opposition to increase defense spending after Russia invaded Ukraine, and Liberal leader Jakob Ellemann-Jensen and Conservative leader Søren Pape Poulsen.

“We’re battling to the finish. After voting north of Copenhagen, Frederiksen predicted a close election. “I’m hopeful but unsure.”

In June, former Liberal leader Lars Løkke Rasmussen founded his moderate party.

Polls suggest his Moderates could win 10%. He has suggested a Social Democratic-led coalition and a prime ministerial run.

Two new center-right parties that seek to limit immigration are running for parliament and may knock out a third similar organization that has played a crucial role in previous governments by advocating for harsher migration regulations without being in a coalition.

In June, Inger Støjberg founded the Denmark Democrats.

The rarely used Impeachment Court convicted Støjberg in 2021 for ordering asylum-seeking couples with minors to be separated in 2016.

She can run again after serving 60 days. Pollsters predict her party will receive 7% of the vote.

That might imperil the once-powerful populist, anti-immigration Danish People’s Party, which has been coming apart in recent months due to internal disputes and is hanging around the two percent threshold for parliament.

The party won 21.1 percent in 2015.

Støjberg’s party resembles the small nationalistic, anti-immigration New Right party in parliament. They want a center-right government.

After ousting Løkke Rasmussen in 2019, Frederiksen has led a minority, one-party Social Democratic government.

The Faroe Islands and Greenland each have two seats in the 179-seat Danish parliament.

On Tuesday, Danish network DR reported that one Faroese seat moved to the center left and one to the center right in Denmark. Greenland votes Tuesday.

Also Read

Denmark will wear protest shirts for 2022 World Cup in Qatar

Denmark will wear an all-black kit for the FIFA World Cup 2022....