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Danish Social Democrats slump in polls as corona effect wears off

Denmark's ruling Social Democrats have plummetted in a new poll, adding to growing evidence that the "pandemic boost" the party has enjoyed since last March is wearing off.

Published: 15 June 2021 19:09 CEST

Danish Social Democrats slump in polls as corona effect wears off

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen visits an adult eduction centre outside Copenhagen. Photo: Henning Bagger/Ritzau Scanpix

The poll for the Berlingske newspaper by opinion researchers Kantar Gallup, found that 26.7 percent of voters planned to vote for the party, down from a high of 33.1 percent at the party’s polling peak last June.

The poll also brought bad news to the centre-right Liberal Party, and the populist Danish People’s Party.

The former is still languishing with the support of just 12.8 percent of voters, putting it behind the formerly minority Conservative Party, which had the support of 13.6 percent.

The populist Danish People’s Party, meanwhile, has fallen still further behind the upstart New Right party, with the support of 5.6 percent of voters compared to the New Right’s 8.5 percent.

In another sign of the upheaval on Denmark’s right, the Christian Democratic Party, which was knocked out of parliament in the 2005 election and failed to get over the 2 percent parliamentary threshold in the four following general elections is now polling at 2.3 percent.

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Danish government split over repatriation of women and children from Syria

The Moderate party, one of the junior parties in the coalition, wants Danish children to be repatriated from the al-Roj prison camp in northern Syria, even if it means their mothers are evacuated with them.

The other two parties, the Social Democrats and Liberals (Venstre), still oppose bringing the women back to Denmark.

The two latter parties have stated that they only want to evacuate the children and not the mothers, who are in the camps because they have been sympathisers of the Islamic State (Isis) terror group or spouses of Isis militants.

As such, the government is split over the question of whether to retrieve the five children and three mothers from the camp, where they have now been marooned for several years.

Human rights organisations have in the past expressed concerns over the conditions at the prison camps and Denmark has faced criticism for not evacuating children there who have connections to Denmark.

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Current government policy does not evacuate children from the two camps without their mothers and will not evacuate mothers if their Danish citizenship has been revoked.

A recent headline case saw a mother from the camp win an appeal against a Danish immigration ministry decision to revoke her citizenship, meaning she now has the right to be evacuated. She was expected to be prosecuted by Denmark under terrorism laws on her return to the country.

Denmark’s Scandinavian neighbour Norway on Wednesday repatriated two sisters who went to Syria as teenagers as well as their three children, citing abysmal conditions in the camp where they were housed.

Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, leader of the Moderate party, said at a parliamentary committee hearing on Wednesday that the government will state its agreed position on the issue “soon”, news wire Ritzau reports.

“The government will make a decision on the government’s position on the basis of the updated government policy position. And I expect we will do that soon,” he said.

Rasmussen said in January that the government had asked the relevant authorities to provide up-to-date information related to the Danish children who remain in the camps.

That information is expected to form the “policy position” (beslutningsgrundlag) referred to by Rasmussen in his committee comments.

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