(Adnkronos) – The center-left could lose control of Copenhagen today for the first time in the city’s history, as residents of the Danish capital head to the polls for municipal and regional elections amidst growing disillusionment with the divisive policies of Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. Her Social Democrats have governed the city for over 100 years, and have produced all the mayors the municipality has had since the introduction of the current electoral system in 1938, but the latest polls suggest that the most likely outcome of the vote will be a defeat for the party’s candidate, Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil, former minister of social affairs and housing, a friend of Frederiksen, with whom she shares ownership of a summer house.
Among the reasons cited by analysts are fatigue and frustration with Frederiksen’s uncompromising policies on issues such as integration and immigration. A recent poll conducted by Megafon for TV2 shows the Socialistisk Folkeparti, SF (Green Left), Enhedslisten (Red-Green Alliance) and Alternativet (The Alternative) capable of forming a left-wing majority without the support of the Social Democrats. If this is confirmed in the vote, Sisse Marie Welling of the Green Left should be considered among the potential future mayors of the capital.
Karoline Lindgaard, mayoral candidate for the ecological movement Alternative, identifies the crisis of support for the Social Democrats in the fact that the latter “have shifted politically to the right, becoming a right-wing populist party on issues such as integration, unemployment support, and the environment. It was a cynical strategic maneuver to avoid losing voters to the far-right, but it seems, according to polls, that all they have done is prepare their own voters to join the far-right instead of staying with the Social Democrats.” “They are on track to worsen the housing crisis, fail the city’s climate goals, and promote a car-centric urban paradigm,” she further denounces.
