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All 179 seats to the Folketing 90 seats were needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Turnout | 87.1% | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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General elections were held in Denmark on 20 November 2001. [1] For the first time since the 1924 elections, the Social Democrats did not win the most seats. Anders Fogh Rasmussen of the centre-right Venstre became Prime Minister in coalition with the Conservative People's Party, as the head of the first Rasmussen government, with the support from Danish People's Party.
Denmark, officially the Kingdom of Denmark, is a Nordic country and the southernmost of the Scandinavian nations. Denmark lies southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and is bordered to the south by Germany. The Kingdom of Denmark also comprises two autonomous constituent countries in the North Atlantic Ocean: the Faroe Islands and Greenland. Denmark proper consists of a peninsula, Jutland, and an archipelago of 443 named islands, with the largest being Zealand, Funen and the North Jutlandic Island. The islands are characterised by flat, arable land and sandy coasts, low elevation and a temperate climate. Denmark has a total area of 42,924 km2 (16,573 sq mi), land area of 42,394 km2 (16,368 sq mi), and the total area including Greenland and the Faroe Islands is 2,210,579 km2 (853,509 sq mi), and a population of 5.8 million.
The Social Democrats, officially Social Democracy, is a social-democratic political party in Denmark. It was the major coalition partner in government from the 2011 parliamentary election, with then-party leader Helle Thorning-Schmidt as Prime Minister. After the 2015 parliamentary election, the party is no longer in government, though it regained the position as the largest party in the Danish parliament, the Folketing, with 47 of 179 seats. Helle Thorning-Schmidt withdrew as party leader on the night of the election as a direct consequence of the loss of government control, and she was succeeded on 28 June 2015 by the former vice leader, Mette Frederiksen.
The coalition relied on the votes of other right-wing parties such as the Danish People's Party, which polled better than ever before. Voter turnout was 87.1% in Denmark proper, 80.0% in the Faroe Islands and 61.5% in Greenland. [2] The Venstre led coalition government would last until the 2011 election, lasting through two intermediate elections.
The Danish People's Party (DPP) is a political party in Denmark which is generally described as right-wing populist by academics and far-right by international media. It has also been described in academia and the media as a nativist and anti-immigrant party. The party was founded in 1995 by Pia Kjærsgaard, who was the leader of the party until 2012, when she passed the leadership on to Kristian Thulesen Dahl. The DPP lent its support to the Liberal-Conservative government from the general election of 2001 until the 2011 election defeat. While not part of the cabinet, DPP cooperated closely with the governing coalition on most issues and received support for key political stances in return, to the point that the government was commonly referred to as the "VKO-government".
The Faroe Islands, or the Faeroe Islands—a North Atlantic archipelago located 200 miles (320 km) north-northwest of the United Kingdom and about halfway between Norway and Iceland—are an autonomous country of the Kingdom of Denmark. Total area is about 1,400 square kilometres (540 sq mi) with a population of 50,322 in October 2017.
Greenland is an autonomous constituent country of the Kingdom of Denmark between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for more than a millennium. The majority of its residents are Inuit, whose ancestors began migrating from the Canadian mainland in the 13th century, gradually settling across the island.
The election marked a major shift in Danish politics: It was the first time that the right leaning parties held an outright majority in the parliament since the beginning of the modern democratic system in Denmark in 1901; [3] although right leaning parties had held power several times, they had always had to share power with more centrist or left-wing parties in coalition governments, such as the Danish Social Liberal Party. Historian Bo Lidegaard said that the vote showed a move away from broad national consensus which had existed since the 1930s regarding the style of governance in Denmark. One of the most important changes that forced the change was the rise of immigration as a political issue and the ensuing rise of the Danish People's Party. [3] Immigration played a central role in the 2001 campaign and was thrust into focus by the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, although it had been gaining attention for years. [3]
The Danish Social Liberal Party is a social-liberal political party in Denmark. The party is a member of Liberal International and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE).
Bo Lidegaard is a Danish historian, diplomat, author and editor in chief of daily broadsheet newspaper Politiken.
