In Denmark’s general election on June 5, the Danes gave the center-left and far left parties on the political spectrum — the Social Democratic Party, Det Radikale Venstre (the Danish Social Liberal Party), Socialistisk Folkeparti (the Socialist People’s Party), and Enhedslisten (the Red-Green Alliance) — 91 seats in parliament, a majority out of the 179 available seats. In doing so, the Danes waved goodbye to the current liberal-conservative government. The largest party on the left, the Social Democratic Party with 48 seats, and led by Mette Frederiksen, is currently trying to form a government.
A significant development in this election was that anti-immigration parties generally fared poorly. Dansk Folkeparti, (the Danish People’s Party), which had become the second-largest party in the 2015 elections, when it was the only party running on a strict anti-immigration platform and where it received 21% of the votes and 37 seats, was reduced to less than half, receiving only 8.7% of the votes and 16 seats. The new anti-Islamic, anti-immigration party, Stram Kurs, which campaigned on a platform of prohibiting Islam and deporting Muslims from Denmark, did not manage to cross the election threshold of 2%. It received only 1.8 % of the votes. Led by Rasmus Paludan, who became famous for demonstrating across Denmark — where he frequently featured a “Koran stunt” in which he would either throw a Koran around, burn it or put bacon on it — the party only managed to qualify to run in the elections a month before they took place. Finally, a new party on the right, Nye Borgerlige (the New Right) won four seats, with 2.4 % of the vote. The party ran on a platform that demanded that no more asylum seekers be allowed into the country, that foreigners must support themselves financially and that foreign criminals be deported after their first sentencing in court. The current Prime Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, said he would not cooperate politically with either Rasmus Paludan or the New Right should they be elected to parliament.
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