Two national elections coming up in Europe, both in small peaceful countries of the sort that admirers of Europe generally like to talk about. Slovenia goes to the polls on Sunday, followed on Tuesday by Denmark.
Slovenia’s last election, four years ago, was a decisive win for a then-new liberal party, the Freedom Movement. It won 34.5% of the vote and 41 of the 90 seats, more than ten points clear of its main rival, the centre-right Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), which had 23.5% and 27 seats. Only three other parties reached the 4% threshold: the Christian Democrats (6.9% and eight seats), the Social Democrats (6.7% and seven seats) and the Left (4.5% and five seats).*
The Freedom Movement formed a coalition government with the Social Democrats and the Left, and its leader, Robert Golob, became prime minister. He is now seeking a second term, and he may get it: although the government has not been seen as a great success, the three coalition parties are tracking around 40% of the vote between them in the opinion polls. With a substantial number of votes wasted on parties that fall below the threshold, that could be enough to put them within striking distance of a majority.
More probably they will fall short, and the question then will be whether the SDS, under its Trumpist leader Janez Janša, can put together a majority. His potential partners are the Christian Democrats and a new party, the Democrats, a breakaway from the SDS led by former presidential candidate Anže Logar. There is also a far-right and anti-vax party, Resni, which is polling close to the threshold having managed 2.9% last time.
Janša has been prime minister three times already (and been to jail twice), but although he has embraced a number of far-right positions he has always depended upon more moderate elements, both within the SDS and in his coalition partners, which have kept Slovenia on the democratic road. It’s likely that the same would be the case in a fourth term.
Meanwhile in Denmark, Social Democrat prime minister Mette Frederiksen is seeking a third term of office. At the last election, in 2022 – held early due to the mink cull scandal – the left-of-centre parties held on to the narrowest of majorities, with 90 seats out of 179. Frederiksen decided that this was not enough, and after several weeks of negotiations she formed a more centrist coalition, taking in the right-liberals (although their name, Venstre, actually means “left”) and the Moderates.
That didn’t actually improve her numbers much, because she lost the support of four parties on the left: the Green Left, the Red-Green Alliance, the Alternative (also Greens) and the left-liberals (whose name, also confusingly, means “radical left”). Even with the four members from Greenland and the Faroe Islands, the government only has 93 seats. But because its opponents are split between left and right its tactical position is stronger than it looks.
By Danish standards it’s been an eventful four years, especially with the return of Donald Trump and his campaign to take over Greenland. Nonetheless, the polls are not showing any discernible shift between left and right: the two sides remain neck and neck. Within each camp, however, there’s been a big movement away from the parties composing the present government, which collectively are down something like 15 points.
It seems that, as often happens, voters don’t much like the idea of their parties co-operating with the other side. The less consensus-minded parties seem to be doing better, particularly the Green Left and the far-right Danish People’s Party, each up by around five points. If that holds up next week, forming a new majority coalition is going to be a tricky task.
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* Alert readers will notice that these only add to 88 seats; there are also two representing Hungarian and Italian ethnic minorities.
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