In Copenhagen, the Social Democrats look like they could lose one of their four seats, according to a forecast by Altinget, which could be bad news for Sophie Hæstorp Andersen, the city’s former Social Democrat mayor who became social affairs minister in 2024.
There are four other big names among the 12 candidates for the Social Democrats in the capital, including Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard and Ida Auken, who was environment minister between 2011 and 2014. MPs Mette Reissmann and Yildiz Akdogan are also standing, the latter of which was one of the first female politicians with an immigrant background to be elected to the Danish parliament.
Which of those five names will make the cut if there are only three seats up for the taking?
The Liberals (Venstre), who currently only have two seats in Copenhagen constituency, look set to lose either one or both of them. Those seats are currently held by the party’s policy chair Jan E. Jørgensen and former MEP Linea Søgaard-Lidell.
The Moderates, who like the Liberals are also in government, look like they could lose one of their two seats in Copenhagen, which could potentially be a problem for culture minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt, the party's highest-profile figure after leader Lars Løkke Rasmussen.
It's worth keeping in mind that MPs who miss out in their constituencies can can still make it into parliament under the tillægsmandat system.
Candidates can be elected through two types of mandate: a kredsmandat or a tillægsmandat (“constituency mandate” or “additional mandate”).
There are 135 kredsmandater. These are awarded based purely on local results: the candidate with most votes in a constituency gets that constituency’s seat or kredsmandat.
The 40 tillægsmandater are based on the vote share a party gets nationally and are designed to give parliament an equal reflection of the national vote split. Candidates with a good number of personal votes, but who didn’t win the election locally, can therefore be elected on a tillægsmandat.
Merete Riisager, a former education minister for Liberal Alliance, is attempting to get back into parliament and win one of the party’s three predicted seats in the capital. Could she end up being a minister once again if the right-wing bloc wins on Tuesday?
In the Zealand constituency, the Danish People’s Party’s chairman Morten Messerschmidt will fill party founder Pia Kjærsgaard’s seat after Kjærsgaard announced she would not be standing in the 2026 election.
The Moderates’ leader, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, is expected to take one of the party’s predicted two seats in Zealand, where he will most likely be joined by current Moderate MP Charlotte Bagge Hansen.
Pia Olsen Dyhr, the chair of Green Left (known as Socialistisk Folkeparti in Danish) is also standing in Zealand where she is expected to take one of the party’s seats.
In good news for the Liberals, they look set to win four seats in Zealand, which is one more than previously predicted. There are two Liberal ministers standing in the constituency who so far look like they will be re-elected: Morten Dahlin (minister for ecclesiastical affairs) and Jacob Jensen, the minister for food, agriculture and fisheries.
The Denmark Democrats look set to keep their two seats in Zealand.
In Funen, the Social Democrats look like they will only win four seats compared to the six seats they won in 2022. This could potentially be bad news for Jeppe Brus Christensen, the minister for green transition.
The Moderates only got one seat in the Funen constituency in 2022, which Altinget predicts will happen again this election. Lars Aagaard, climate, energy and utilities minister, will have to battle it out against Moderate MP Rosa Eriksen.
There are a lot of party leaders standing in the East Jutland constituency, including Liberal leader Troels Lund Poulsen, who is also defence minister. Liberal Alliance’s leader Alex Vanopslagh is also standing in this constituency, as well as the leader of the Conservatives, Mona Juul, and Lars Boje Mathiesen, chair of the newly-formed Citizens’ Party.
Social Democrat finance minister Nicolai Wammen is also standing in East Jutland, where the party won six seats in 2022.
The Moderates look set to lose two of their three seats in the constituency, which could threaten digital government minister Caroline Stage Olsen and higher education and science minister Christina Egelund.
In Northern Jutland, prime minister Mette Frederiksen, who is also leader of the Social Democrats, is standing, although as the politician who got the most personal votes in 2022 her seat is safe. In the Danish system you can either vote generally for a party or personally for a specific candidate in that party.
Leader of the Denmark Democrats, Inger Støjberg, is also standing in Northern Jutland. Her party is expected to lose one of its three seats in the constituency.
Finally, the Liberals could lose one of their three seats in Northern Jutland. There are two Liberal ministers standing in the constituency – the minister for resilience and preparedness Torsten Schack Pedersen and the minister for European affairs, Marie Bjerre, who will be competing for votes against their popular party colleague Preben Bang Henriksen. Pedersen got the least personal votes of the three in the last election, which means he could end up losing his seat.
A number of big names from the previous political term are not standing in the 2026 election. These include Social Democrats Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil, who left politics last year after losing the Copenhagen mayoral election, and Dan Jørgensen, who became EU commissioner in 2024.
Former leader of the Social Liberal Party (Radikale Venstre), Sofie Carsten Nielsen will not be standing, nor Conservative Rasmus Jarlov. Søren Pape Poulsen, who led the Conservative party until his death from a brain haemorrhage in March 2024 will also be notably absent from ballot papers.
Former Moderate MP Mike Fonseca, who was expelled from the party in 2023 after violating its rules on relationships with people under the age of 18 when it was revealed he had a 15-year-old girlfriend, will also not be standing.
For the Liberals, former leader Jakob Ellemann-Jensen, who served as defence minister and deputy prime minister until 2023, has since left Danish politics while his sister, Karen Ellemann, who has also served as a Liberal MP, left parliament in 2023 to serve as secretary-general of the Nordic Council of Ministers.
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