Bombay Durpun - Danish PM's left-wing bloc leads election, but no majority

Two exit polls showed the left-wing bloc taking between 83 and 86 seats in the 179-seat parliament, while the right-wing bloc was credited with between 75 and 78 seats.

If the results are confirmed, the centrist Moderate party, headed by Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, would become the kingmaker, with 14 seats.

Frederiksen, seen as the favourite going into the elections, has been praised for her leadership after fending off US President Donald Trump's repeated demands to annex Greenland, a Danish autonomous territory he claims the United States needs for national security reasons.

The prime minister, who has been in office since 2019, spent part of election day in Aalborg, her electoral stronghold in the country's northwest, with Greenlanders living in Denmark.

As no party is expected to win a majority, thorny negotiations will be needed in the coming days and weeks to build a coalition government.

Danish public broadcaster DR's exit poll credited the Social Democrats, traditionally Denmark's biggest party, with just 19.2 percent of votes, their lowest score since 1901 and down from 27.5 percent in 2022.

The anti-immigration Danish People's Party, which has heavily influenced policy since the late 1990s but slumped in the 2022 election, almost tripled its score, to between 7.5 to 7.7 percent of votes.

"We have made Denmark a pioneer when it comes to tightening immigration, and we focus on what is most important for any party but which all the others neglect: putting our own people first. We put Danes first," party leader Morten Messerschmidt told cheering supporters.

Simon Eriksen, a 31-year-old Social Democratic supporter at the party's election night rally, acknowledged that its exit poll forecast "wasn't very good".

"But it was also really bad in 2022, and the (final) results ended up being much better. I hope that'll be the case again tonight," he told AFP.

The exit polls showed all three parties in Frederiksen's unprecedented left-right government losing support.

- 'Serious situation' -

The four overseas seats held by Denmark's two autonomous territories -- two for Greenland and two for the Faroe Islands -- could tip the balance if the election result is very close.

The campaign has generated more interest than usual in Greenland, where 27 candidates vied for the two seats.

"I think it's the most important election for the Danish parliament in Greenland in history," Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen told AFP in Nuuk.

"We are in a time where we have a superpower trying to acquire us, take us, control us," he added, stressing that the territory still found itself in a "serious situation".

"I think the most important thing that all the parties in Greenland have agreed on is that we need to work together, whoever gets elected for the parliament," he said.

But Greenlandic voter Lars did not share the view that Greenland's parties stood united, saying he kept seeing divisions play out on social media.

"Everybody is fighting. Greenlanders are fighting. It's terrible," the lawyer told AFP.

Greenland's main political parties all want independence from Denmark, but differ on the pace of the separation.

- 'New beginning' -

In Denmark, the row over the vast Arctic island has however not been central in the campaign.

In the wealthy nation of six million people, the campaign instead focused on domestic issues, including inflation, the welfare state and high nitrate levels in water from agriculture.

Immigration has also been a hot topic.

As prime minister, Frederiksen has advocated further tightening migration policy in order to quell support for the far right.

She has defended as "fair" a proposal to deny non-essential health care to people of foreign origin who threaten medical personnel.

R.Khurana--BD