Women in particular helped vote Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt into office, but according to a closer study of some 28,000 Gallup interviews, her popularity among women has waned somewhat.

The study, carried out by Aarhus University Professor Søren Risberg Thomsen for Altinget.dk, shows that some 51 per cent of women would vote for the centre-right if an election were held now.

The result of the survey is surprising, as Danish women traditionally vote more to the left than men. Over the past 35 years, only one election has seen a centre-right majority among women – when Anders Fogh Rasmussen (Lib) beat Poul Nyrup Rasmussen (SocDem) in 2001.

In the 2011 election that put Thorning-Schmidt into the prime minister’s office, 54 per cent of women voted in favour of Denmark’s first woman prime minister, while a majority of men voted in favour of the centre-right. That picture has now changed, with a slim majority of women looking to the centre-right.

“The change we have seen is general rejection of the current government, and women have joined that movement, although it is more evident among men,” Copenhagen University Electoral Researcher Kasper Møller Hansen tells Altinget.dk.

Nonetheless he adds that women still have a tendency to vote more to the centre-left than men.

“The profile for women voters is that they are often public servants,” Møller Hansen says.

“Women have traditionally been the hands-on section of society as teachers, nurses and pre-school teachers, and it is here that we see an increased tendency to vote for the centre-left,” he says.

FACEBOOK – Follow Politiken’s News in English