Nor did we get a clear answer tonight from either Venstre’s Troels Lund Poulsen or Socialdemokratiet’s Mette Frederiksen about their governing strategy. Troels Lund Poulsen does not flatly rule out entering a government with Mette Frederiksen. He says he can’t see it happening with the policies she has presented during the campaign, but he won’t renounce it outright.
The door many have tried to get him to shut is still ajar. Not wide open, but still ajar.
Mette Frederiksen, for her part, also won’t rule out a new broad centrist government, though during the campaign she has moved more toward a center-left government. But she won’t renounce it, either.
Meanwhile the third man, Lars Løkke Rasmussen (Moderaterne, M), seemed somewhat alone as the one who, in a time of war in Iran and Ukraine and threats to the Kingdom of Denmark, still sees a broad government across the center as his preferred option.
Whether he truly believes it is still possible to put S and V in the same pen is another matter.
Tonight’s debate showed that Troels Lund Poulsen’s idea of a center-right government with Moderaterne did not resonate with large parts of the blue bloc. Dansk Folkeparti (DF) is still categorically opposed, and Inger Støjberg (Danmarksdemokraterne, DD) did not exactly hide that her desire to team up again with her old boss from her time in Venstre is minimal.
Meanwhile, earlier in the day, Moderaterne themselves had Culture Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt slam the door hard on DF and Morten Messerschmidt.
Here are five other moments from the debate that stood out to me:
Blue unity on immigration
The debate showed that on immigration, the parties on the right are more unified, while the red bloc has to straddle everything from Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen to Enhedslisten (Ø) or Alternativet (Å). In any potential center-left government, however, they would not be allowed to dictate immigration policy — the majority can be found on the right side of the chamber. And Moderaterne, SF og Radikale are, all else equal, tougher. Just not tough in the DF-and-Støjberg way.
That is also why it is noteworthy that the prime minister still stands by her strict immigration policy, but today more clearly insists on not talking down all foreigners.
Finally, the debate showed that the blue bloc is more divided on agriculture than the red bloc. But it did not show what government we will get after Tuesday.
Instead, it suggested that this could drag on for quite some time. Maybe even longer than last time.
When it took six weeks to form the SVM government.
U-turn on gasoline
The first topic in DR’s debate was the economy, including rising gasoline prices, which have put most parties in a bind: On the one hand, there is a majority for the green transition, including shifting the car fleet from gasoline and diesel to electric.
But on the other hand, when the price of gasoline and diesel explodes – and am electoral campaign is underway – the parties have fallen like dominoes, ready to bring prices down. By cutting taxes – or, in Enehdslisten’s case, by changing the commuter tax deduction. Venstre rode that wave before Socialdemokratiet did, though only by a hair.
Still, this was where Troels Lund Poulsen went after Mette Frederiksen. Not on gasoline, but on taxes. He still very much wants to talk about a wealth tax and, more broadly, about taxes – and tax cuts – and making Denmark richer. In case anyone still had doubts about Venstre’s campaign slogan.
Mette Frederiksen avoided taking Troels Lund head-on. She ignored him, he tried again, she ignored him again, and instead got into a close-quarters fight with Liberal Alliance’s Alex Vanopslagh. Then she pulled back and spoke about a crisis far bigger than high gasoline prices, worries over stagflation — when the economy stagnates as inflation rises. A toxic cocktail.
Lars Boje pulled off a difficult balancing act
Lars Boje is one of the politicians who has broken through in this campaign and looks poised to enter Parliament with Borgernes Parti (BP). He has made the rounds in several parties himself, is hard-line on immigration and anti-climate – but the moment people really listen is when he says something else entirely. When, in a debate about gasoline taxes, he says that beyond wanting to get rid of those taxes altogether, he sees challenges in completely different places: in the development of AI, which is already changing our lives and will do so even more dramatically in the future.
That made Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen nod appreciatively. The nod was directed at the argument — not Lars Boje as a person.
Early in the campaign, he also weighed in on the school debate with wholly new nuances. Because he is a teacher. And in the debate about pigs, he put himself on the pigs’ side — unlike several of his colleagues on the right.
In that way, he added new facets to himself. That is not usually so easy in a campaign.
Rosenkilde cuts through
Alternativet is, in this campaign, the same place it stood in 2022: close to the threshold, and with the possibility to shift the balance. That is why some are already talking about voting tactically – to get Alternativet in, so the left does not waste votes. The same applies on the right, but there, no one is really talking about voting tactically by backing Lars Boje’s Borgernes Parti.
Franciska Rosenkilde is a politician who does not make much of an impression between elections, but she has shown before that she can use the big party-leader debates. She did that again tonight.
It was Alternativet that started the pig debate, but other parties have joined in, and Alternativet therefore has to fight not only to have shaped it, but also to be able to profit from it electorally.
In the duel with Danmarksdemokraterne’s Inger Støjberg, the pig debate comes into sharp focus. They are both out on the flanks, each on their own side. Støjberg on the farmer’s side. Rosenkilde on the pig’s.
The agriculture’s long shadow
Troels Lund has said during the campaign that he is not in the pocket of the agriculture. He isn’t, but Venstre still has close ties to the farming sector, and within Venstre’s own organizations, agriculture still takes up a disproportionate amount of space.
For years Venstre has tried to step out of agriculture’s shadow and into the broader business world, and in the periods when farming has not loomed so large, things have been somewhat easier.
This campaign has been markedly different. Agriculture has loomed large and still does, both when it comes to drinking water and to pig production. It pushes Troels Lund onto the defensive. He, too, wants a pesticide ban, but on a voluntary basis and through a green tripartite deal – as Venstre itself proposed, as Venstre was uneasy about, but which Venstre today defends tooth and nail.
Troels Lund Poulsen is being squeezed from several sides. Danmarksdemokraterne are the fierce defenders of conventional agriculture, while Konservative under Mona Juul have sharpened their green profile, and Liberal Alliance is calling for far wilder nature than the other parties on the right.
In that sea, there are not many life rafts for Venstre and Troels Lund Poulsen.
