Social Democrats Lose Danish Elections

Denmark held municipal elections on Tuesday. The results were bad news for the Social Democrats party. They lost control of many cities across the country.

The biggest change is that Venstre is now the largest party for city mayors. Venstre won 39 mayoral positions. The Social Democrats won only 25. This is very different from 2021, when the Social Democrats won 44 cities and Venstre won 34.

The Social Democrats are still the biggest party when you count all the votes in Denmark. They got 23.2% of votes. However, this is 5.2 percentage points less than in 2021. They lost 156 seats in total across the country.

The most important loss was Copenhagen. The Social Democrats controlled Copenhagen for more than 100 years. This ended on Tuesday night. Sisse Marie Welling from the SF party (Green Left) will be the new lord mayor of Copenhagen. She said: "We have written history at city hall."

The Prime Minister is Mette Frederiksen. She is the leader of the Social Democrats. She admitted the results were worse than expected. She said: "We had expected to go back, but it seems that the decline is greater than we had expected."

Frederiksen explained why her party lost support. She talked about rising food prices and problems between rural and urban areas. She also mentioned crime and immigration.

Despite the losses, the Social Democrats kept control of Denmark's biggest cities. Anders Winnerskjold will continue as mayor of Aarhus. Peter Rahbæk Juel will stay as mayor of Odense. Lasse Frimand Jensen will lead Aalborg, and Michael Vindfeldt will remain mayor of Frederiksberg.

More people voted in this election than in 2021. The turnout was 69.2%, up from 67.5% in 2021.

In Denmark's regions, most went to right-wing parties. Only one region, Østdanmark, will have a Social Democrat chairman. The other regions chose leaders from Venstre.

Political experts say this is a big loss for the Social Democrats. They lost several important cities that they controlled for many years.