The 2017 Danish regional elections and the victorious parliamentary parties

ABSTRACT

Regional politics is not at the centre of most Danes’ political attention, but at the 2017 regional elections more than 7 in 10 Danes showed up at the polls to vote in the five Danish regions. Although several regional lists and smaller nationwide parties ran at the elections, the established parties already represented in the national parliament conquered all but two of the 205 seats. This is not to say that the voters simply copied their national vote – almost 3 in 10 voted for a different party at the regional elections than the one they would have preferred had they been voting at a general election.

KEYWORDS:

• Regional elections
• local party systems
• inter-level split-ticket voting
• Denmark
• regional parties

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Since the parliamentary term is not fixed (the four years are a maximum), local and national elections may coincide. However, this has happened only once, namely in 2001.

2 The regions do have minor tasks regarding regional development, environmental protection, and public transportation but more than 97 pct. of their budget are devoted to health care.

3 Table 1 demonstrates that the number of eligible voters is larger at local than at national elections, which is due to the different voting requirements at the two types of election for foreign citizens living in Denmark (see Kjaer forthcoming).

4 At the 2014 EP election in Denmark, the percentage of invalid votes was 2.4 and, therefore, truly second-ordered being twice as high as the 1.2 percent at the national election, while the regional elections are then “3,58-ordered” (see also Heath et al. 1999).