TheCopenhagenPost
June 19th, 2015

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Difficult days ahead for Lars Løkke (photo: Johannes Jansson)

The final vote count has confirmed that the blue bloc has won 90 seats and the red bloc 85 – an overall defeat for Helle Thorning-Schmidt’s coalition government and its allies.

Despite her party Socialdemokraterne winning the biggest share of the vote (26.3 percent), she was unable to command a parliamentary majority and has stepped down as party leader.

READ MORE: Election Live: Denmark has a new government

Dansk Folkeparti, which is now the second-biggest party with 21.1 percent of the votes, was the biggest winner. But it will be up to Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the leader of Venstre, which came in third place with 19.5 percent, to form a government.

Uffe Tang, DR’s political editor, told DR Nyheder this could be a complicated task.

“It’s not the case that Lars Løkke Rasmussen can just run with the well-known Venstre-Konservative government and let Dansk Folkeparti support him,” he said.

“Dansk Folkeparti is now significantly bigger than Venstre, and that provides new challenges for how Løkke will put his government together.”

Too early to predict
Tang considers it too early to predict the composition of the new government, but he points out there could be advantages for Løkke to form a government with DF as opposed to relying on it as a support party.

“I personally think that Lars Løkke Rasmussen will be very interested in finding out if he can get Kristian Thulesen Dahl and Dansk Folkeparti into a government, even though they have been hesitant,” he explained.

“It will be so much easier for Løkke to control, I think he will imagine, if he has DF in the government, instead of them being outside and pressing him.”

Thulesen Dahl was not giving much away when asked by DR about the negotiations in the coming days.

“I expect it will be a good chat,” he said.