Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called parliamentary elections on Thursday for 24 March. The Social Democrat leader has governed in a three-party coalition with two right-wing parties, the Liberals and Moderates, since December 2022.
Frederiksen called the vote more than six months early, amid a revival in support for her party following the conflict with US President Donald Trump over control of Greenland. The would-be dictator has repeated for well over a year his intention to seize the Arctic island, which is an autonomous territory within the Danish Kingdom. His so-called “Donroe doctrine” seeks unchallenged US hegemony over the Western Hemisphere as a basis for waging war against its main rivals, China and Russia, and increasingly the European imperialist powers. In January, Trump threatened on several occasions to use military force to conquer Greenland, as his far-right government simultaneously abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Denmark and the European imperialist powers responded by launching a major military buildup throughout the Arctic region under the auspices of NATO.
Trump’s aggressive bullying and war policies, as well as his vicious far-right persecution of immigrants and mobilisation of ICE thugs to gun down protesters, have met with widespread revulsion across Europe and in Denmark. Frederiksen and her foreign minister, Moderate leader Lars Løkke Rasmussen, have been presented in the Danish media as the main opponents of Trump, warning him against breaking the Transatlantic alliance and denouncing his threats against territorial integrity and international law.
As a result, Frederiksen in particular appears likely to benefit from a rebound in support for the Social Democrats. Just over three months ago, the Social Democrats achieved one of their worst-ever results in Denmark’s municipal election, falling well below 20 percent and losing control of the city government in Copenhagen for the first time in a century. There was even talk in some quarters that it was time for Frederiksen, who has been Prime Minister since 2019, to depart.
The first poll by public broadcaster DR after Frederiksen’s election call on Thursday, by contrast, put Denmark’s largest party at over 20 percent, with one recent poll predicting it could secure over 22 percent of the vote. For his part, Rasmussen, who led a delegation to Washington in January to meet with US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has seen his party’s support grow from less than 2 percent at the end of 2025 to 5.7 percent today. To secure representation in the Danish parliament (Folketing), a party must win at least 2 percent of the vote.
However, the results of another poll underlined that there is by no means mass enthusiasm for any of the leading candidates. Asked by DR whom they would prefer to become Prime Minister after the election, just 22 percent responded in favour of Frederiksen, with a further 8 percent declaring their support for Troels Lund Poulsen, the leader of the Liberals, traditionally the largest right-wing party. Over the past three years, Poulsen has served as Frederiksen’s defence minister. In other words, less than a third of the electorate would back one of the two main candidates to govern the country.
The entire political establishment, from the pseudo-left Red-Green Alliance (RGA) to the far-right Danish People’s Party (DF), agrees that Denmark must undertake a major strengthening of its military capabilities. With the support of some opposition parties, Frederiksen’s Social Democrat/Liberal/Moderate coalition has committed to reaching the NATO target of spending 3.5 percent of GDP on the military by 2030. In 2022, Denmark was spending 1.35 percent of its GDP on war, meaning almost a tripling of the war budget in less than a decade. A significant part of this spending increase has gone to providing weaponry to Ukraine to escalate the US/NATO war on Russia. Per head of population, Denmark, with a population of about 6 million people, is one of Ukraine’s most generous military backers.
The Socialist People’s Party (SF) has endorsed the massive increase in Denmark’s defence spending, including an expanded fleet of F-35 fighter jets to conduct patrols in Greenland and the broader Arctic region. SF, which emerged from a right-wing split from the Danish Communist Party following the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, has served for decades as a prop for Social Democrat-led governments.
While the RGA has avoided explicitly backing the 3.5 percent military spending target, its pro-war propaganda has served to block left-wing opposition to Danish militarism and European imperialism’s response to the breakdown of the US-led post-World War II order. For the first time, the RGA decided at its 2025 national meeting to add the defence of the Danish Realm’s territory, which includes Greenland and the Faroe Islands, to its party programme. This was a response to Trump’s threat to seize Greenland, which prompted leading RGA members to give unconditional backing to the Danish government and champion the expansion of European militarism in the Arctic under the NATO banner. The party traditionally campaigned for Denmark to leave NATO, but now insists that “alternative security structures” must first be established.
The RGA has also repeated the lies about the war in Ukraine being the result of “Russian aggression,” rather than the consequence of the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union and NATO’s systematic eastward expansion up to Russia’s borders over the preceding thirty years. It advocates a continuation of the war under the banner of “self-determination” for Ukraine, where it works closely with the US government-funded Sotsialnyi Rukh group.
Frederiksen has avoided committing to a new government based on the so-called “red bloc” parties—SF, the RGA, the Social Liberals, and The Alternative. According to current polls, the “red bloc” would have a majority in the Folketing. Frederiksen has led the first coalition including parties from the red and blue blocs in over four decades, a formation she may choose to retain. The Liberals and Moderates, a relatively new party established by former Liberal Prime Minister and current Foreign Minister Rasmussen after his Liberal-led government left office in 2019, traditionally worked with the right-wing Conservatives and Liberal Alliance, and the far-right DF.
As an olive branch to the “red” parties, Frederiksen announced the Social Democrats’ support for a wealth tax in her speech calling the election. The proposal would see personal wealth above a limit of 25 million kroner (about €3.4 million) taxed at a rate of 0.5 percent. SF calls for a similar tax to be adopted for wealth above 10 million kroner, while the RGA wants a 1 percent tax on wealth over 35 million kroner.
These minor cosmetic changes, even if implemented, would do nothing to change growing social inequality in Denmark, where the top 1 percent owns about a quarter of all wealth. The fact that all the parties are committed to a huge expansion in war spending means that the relatively small sums such taxes would raise, such as the 7 billion kroner cited by the Social Democrats from their proposal, would be more than offset by the sweeping cuts to public spending demanded by the ruling class to fund militarism.
A victory for the right-wing coalition of parties would result in a government supported by the far-right DF and another far-right party, the Denmark Democrats. Both right-wing extremist formations specialise in racist provocations and have helped create one of Europe’s strictest immigration systems in Denmark over recent decades. Since the election campaign began, DF has insisted that it will only back a “blue bloc” government if it commits to cutting Muslim immigration to Denmark and deporting more Muslims than the number arriving in the country. Ranting in typical fascist Great Replacement theory style, DF leader Morten Messerschmidt declared of Muslim immigration, “It has just been increasing, increasing, increasing, regardless of who has been in government over the past 30 or 40 years. And it has to stop now, because otherwise there won’t be a Denmark. Then the Danes will be a minority in Denmark, and we can’t live with that.”
The parties of the “left” are no less ruthless in their persecution of refugees. Frederiksen’s Social Democrat-led government has collaborated closely with fascist Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to tighten the borders of “fortress Europe” and create the conditions for refugees to be held in concentration camp-style processing centres beyond Europe’s borders.