Turnout: 83.99%
About this election
Denmark held a general election to the Folketing on 24 March 2026. The Social Democrats of Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen finished first but with just 21.84% of the vote and 38 of the seats elected in Denmark proper — reported as the party's weakest result in over a century. A crowded field followed: the Green Left on 20 seats (11.58%), the liberal Venstre on 18 (10.14%), Liberal Alliance on 16 (9.37%), the Danish People's Party on 16 (9.10%), the Moderates on 14 (7.70%) and the Conservatives on 13 (7.59%), with several more parties winning representation. Turnout was a characteristically high 83.99%. Despite the Social Democrats' poor showing, Frederiksen remained in office by assembling a coalition.
Denmark has a consensual, highly proportional multi-party system in which governments almost always rest on the support of several parties grouped loosely into a centre-left "red" bloc and a centre-right "blue" bloc. Mette Frederiksen had led the country since 2019, latterly at the head of an unusual cross-bloc majority coalition. The 2026 election was held amid debates over immigration, the welfare state, the green transition and Arctic security, the last sharpened by renewed international attention on Greenland.
The Folketing has 179 members, of whom 175 are elected in Denmark proper and two each in the Faroe Islands and Greenland. Within Denmark, 135 seats are filled in multi-member constituencies and 40 are levelling seats that correct the overall result to near-perfect proportionality, subject to a 2% national threshold. This low threshold and the levelling mechanism allow a wide range of parties to enter parliament, which is why Danish governments are almost always coalitions or minority cabinets reliant on supporting parties.
The Social Democrats remained the largest single party despite heavy losses. On the left and centre were the Green Left (Socialist People's Party), the Red-Green Alliance, the Social Liberals and The Alternative. The centre-right and right included Venstre, the Conservatives, Liberal Alliance, the Moderates of former prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the Danish People's Party and the Denmark Democrats. The fragmentation of the vote across so many parties was the defining feature of the result.
The Social Democrats' fall to their lowest share since 1903 was the headline story, reflecting both the dispersal of votes among many competitors and the wear of long incumbency. Yet because no bloc won a clear majority outright, the question of who would govern turned, as usual in Denmark, on post-election negotiations rather than on the first-placed party's own total.
After negotiations, Frederiksen formed a minority government with the Green Left, the Moderates and the Social Liberals, relying on the Red-Green Alliance and The Alternative for parliamentary support. The arrangement illustrates the Danish norm whereby governing depends on building a workable parliamentary majority across several parties rather than on winning a majority of seats directly.
The new government must manage a fragmented parliament while addressing immigration policy, the sustainability of the welfare model, the climate transition and questions of Arctic and Greenland sovereignty. As a minority administration, it will need to negotiate support issue by issue, the customary mode of Danish governance.
Foreign and security policy, unusually, ran through the campaign. Renewed international attention on Greenland — a self-governing part of the Kingdom of Denmark that elects two of the Folketing’s members — pushed Arctic sovereignty and the future of the Danish realm up the agenda, alongside the more familiar Danish debates over immigration, the welfare state and the green transition. How the new government manages relations with Greenland and Nuuk’s growing autonomy ambitions is among the questions it inherits.
Ministry of the Interior and the Danish Electoral Board.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.