Tremors, no earthquake: the 2015 Danish parliamentary election

Abstract:

The 2015 election cemented a renewal of the Danish party system. The Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti) climbed to further heights, overtaking the Liberals (Venstre) as the largest non-socialist party in parliament, and became the second largest party ‒ quite an accomplishment for a party formed in 1995 on the ashes of the Progress Party (Fremskridtspartiet). The two parties at the poles of the economic dimension, the Red‒Green Alliance (Enhedslisten) and Liberal Alliance (Liberal Alliance) gained substantial electoral support, as did the Alternative (Alternativet), a completely new party. The historically main parties, the Liberals, Conservatives (Det Konservative Folkeparti), Social Liberals (Radikale Venstre) and Socialist People’s Party (Socialistisk Folkeparti) all lost electoral support. Only one of the five oldest parties increased its electoral share, namely the Social Democrats (Socialdemokraterne); however, the keys to the ministerial offices still had to be returned to Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the Liberal PM, who on election night in 2011 had proclaimed that these keys were merely being ‘lent to the opposition’ (Kosiara-Pedersen 2012: 420). Hence Denmark saw a change in party system and government, as in other recent Nordic elections (Arter 2015; Aylott and Bolin 2015).1