The election crisis is besieging Danish centrist leader Lars Løkke Rasmussen and his Moderate Party due to the party's declining popularity.
According to BT, the report explained that the well-known writer and historian Christian Egander Skov has no doubt that voters are frustrated with Moderate Party leader Lars Løkke Rasmussen and his centrist political project, believing that he is “sucking the oxygen out of Danish politics.”.
Egander Skov told BT that the immediate reason is that when voters cast their ballots for a party like Venstre, their aim is to achieve a more explicitly right-wing policy. However, when both Venstre and the Social Democratic Party join forces with Rasmussen's centrist project, it narrows the voters' choices and removes ideology from Danish politics.
The writer pointed out that “Danes may not live in a highly theoretical ideological atmosphere, but they have values and expect them to be represented,” stressing that the centrist project no longer achieves that.
Lars Løkke Rasmussen's party is in continuous decline
According to the website, recent opinion polls show that Rasmussen’s centrist project and his party are facing a continuous collapse, with the centrist party currently receiving support of no more than 3.5%, compared to the result of the previous elections in 2022, which amounted to 9.3%, meaning the loss of hundreds of thousands of voters.
Egander Skov told BT: “It is clear that voters are abandoning Lars Löke’s party. This is a major blow to the political calculations.”.
Reasons for the decline, according to experts
According to the report, Jacob Bruun, a former advisor to Rasmussen, believes the Centre Party's decline stems from several crises, the influx of a large and incompetent parliamentary group, and internal party defections that have damaged its image. Bruun told BT Sport, "The number of scandals and defections speaks for itself.".
The report noted that half of the Centre Party's votes in the 2022 elections came from Venstre, but today the Liberal Alliance is benefiting from the decline of the Moderate Party, according to a DR poll last October.
Brown added: “Rasmussen seems to be in a ‘slightly precarious’ position because he is acting according to the direction of the political winds, but I think he does not see the poll results as a big problem as long as the party gets some crucial seats.”.
Party viewpoint
For his part, Mohammad Rona, the political spokesman for the Centre Party, stated that he disagreed with Christian Eigander Skov's analysis, saying in an email to BT: “We have created a strong centrist party that aims to better connect the center, especially with the inaction of the radical party, and our mission has succeeded. Extremist parties should not be allowed to dominate Danish politics.”.
Challenges and the party's response to polls
Rona added regarding the poll results: “Yes, our results are not like election night in 2022, and we will fix that, and I am confident of our success.”.
He also explained that despite the challenges, the party learned from the “obstacles along the way”: “Last week we were slightly higher than this week, and so on. We were not punished for our policies or efforts; we faced some obstacles and learned from them,” stressing that the party would continue to pursue reforms to improve its electoral performance.
