Denmark General election 2022 — Results

At a glance

The 2022 Danish general election, held on 1 November 2022, was a snap poll that nonetheless returned Mette Frederiksen to office — but at the head of a very different government. Her Social Democrats recorded their best result in twenty years, yet she chose to abandon her left-bloc majority in favour of an unusual broad coalition spanning the political centre, bringing the historic rivals Social Democrats and Venstre into government together for the first time since 1978.

The rules of the game

As always, the 179 seats were allocated by highly proportional representation (175 in Denmark proper plus four for the Faroes and Greenland), with a 2% threshold and 40 levelling seats ensuring near-perfect proportionality. A bloc needs 90 seats for a majority.

The campaign trail

The election was called early after the Social Liberals threatened to topple the government over the "mink scandal" — the legally questionable order, during the pandemic, to cull Denmark's entire farmed-mink population. The campaign was reshaped by two new parties launched by political heavyweights: the Moderates, founded by former Venstre prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen as an explicitly centrist "kingmaker", and the Denmark Democrats, founded by the hardline former immigration minister Inger Støjberg shortly after a conviction in an impeachment case. Both drew heavily from Venstre, which was also weakened by internal feuding.

The result

The Social Democrats surged to 27.54% and 50 seats, their strongest in two decades. Venstre, squeezed by the two newcomers, collapsed to 13.31% and 23. The Moderates stormed in with 9.27% and 16 seats, the Socialist People's Party rose to 15, and the Denmark Democrats took 8.08% and 14 at their first election. Liberal Alliance rebounded to 14, while the Danish People's Party was reduced to a rump of 5 and the once-mighty bloc politics fragmented further. The left bloc won 87 seats in Denmark proper; with the Faroese and Greenlandic members it reached exactly 90.

Turnout and the map

Turnout was 84.16%. The Social Democrats topped the vote in all five regions, a clean national sweep, with the strongest results in their traditional strongholds outside the capital. The map above shows the leading party by region; click any region for the full breakdown.

After the vote

Although her own bloc held a one-seat majority, Frederiksen had campaigned for a government "across the middle" and resigned to negotiate one. After six weeks she formed the SVM coalition of Social Democrats, Venstre and Moderates, with Lars Løkke Rasmussen as foreign minister — a broad centrist government with a comfortable majority, designed to push through reforms but criticised by both the left and the right for blurring the blocs. Its early decision to abolish a public holiday to fund higher defence spending proved deeply unpopular.

Source

Official results from Statistics Denmark (Danmarks Statistik) — dst.dk/valg. The regional map is built from the agency's results by municipality, aggregated to the five regions.

Compiled and reviewed from official results by ElectioMap. See our data methodology.