Denmark’s Social Democrat prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt has called a general election for June 18th, hoping economic recovery will reverse a poll slide and help her secure a second term.
Aware she has fallen out of favour with voters – for pushing reforms at odds with her centre-left campaign promises in 2011 – Ms Thorning-Schmidt said her coalition had turned recent pain to gain.
"Denmark is back on track, we are out of the crisis," she said in a televised address on Wednesday. "This is the right time to ask Danes if they want to continue on our path or try the opposition's experiment."
The opposition "experiment", currently ahead in opinion polls, would be a return to a centre-right bloc under former prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, similar to what was in office from 2009-2011.
While the governing coalition enjoys 46 per cent in polls, Mr Rasmussen's centre-right camp has about 54 per cent when the anti-immigrant, populist Danish People's Party (DP) is included.
The three-week campaign is likely to be dominated by economic and immigration issues.
Denmark was hit badly by the 2008 financial crisis and, since taking office in 2011, Ms Thorning-Schmidt’s government has struggled with coalition crises and sluggish growth. But official economic forecasts for 2015 were raised this week to 1.7 per cent this year and 2 per cent in 2016.
With the jobless rate falling again, Ms Thorning-Schmidt says her government has cut hospital waiting times and has promised a public investment plan and a €5 billion welfare boost to ensure the upswing is felt by all.
Under pressure from the hard right, however, her government has toughened up Denmark’s approach to immigrants and refugees, launching a campaign promising to make “greater demands” on new arrivals and urging them to “make their contribution” to Danish society.
"If you come to Denmark you must work," reads one placard posted across Copenhagen. It's a reflection of the pressure all parties are feeling from the DP, reflecting similar trends in Sweden and Finland.
The DP won the most votes in last year’s European elections on a radical anti-immigration platform and will be a crucial power broker after the June 18th poll. It will run a campaign demanding tighter border controls and immigration, and polls put it up seven points from 2011 to 19 per cent.
