81.4 percent of eligible voters went to the polls in Tuesday's parliamentary election, which is the lowest turnout in more than 30 years, according to KMD, the IT company responsible for the official counting of the election results.
There were 4,269,044 people who were eligible to vote in Tuesday's election in Denmark. Out of these people, 3,592,041 used their vote, either by post or at one of the polling stations around the country.
This works out at a 84.1 percent turnout, which is the lowest since 1990.
However, it is not that much lower than the turnout for the parliamentary election in 2019, when 84.6 percent of those eligible, voted.
"It’s not a major crisis, but I don’t think it’s a good sign either that we see this drop,” Rune Stubager, Professor at Aarhus University’s Department of Political Science, said at a press briefing on Wednesday.
Stubager said the high number of parties running in the election may be related to the small decrease in turnout.
“I think this idea of the broad government and also the many parties and the new parties may have confused some voters and really made it more difficult for them and some of them have solved that difficulty by abstaining,” he said.
“I’m hesitant to say it, but maybe it’s a surplus of democracy – or a surplus of opportunities, at least. So potentially there’s a tipping point as to how much change and how many parties at least some voters can navigate,” he said.
“On the other hand you would say ‘the more the merrier’, the more parties, the better opportunities parties have for matching their preferences to their vote, but of course it’s also more challenging,” he added.
The majority of voters on Tuesday backed the red bloc and the Social Democrats became the largest party in Christiansborg. Neither the Independent Greens (Fri Grønne) nor the Christian Democrats got enough support to enter parliament, meaning there are now 12 parties in parliament.
The highest turnout to date was during the war in 1943, when 89.5 percent of those eligible, voted. The lowest was 74.9 percent in 1920.
READ MORE: Danish election: What happens next after narrow win for left bloc?
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