DF ‘has not broken through’ on municipal level: leader after election disappointment

The right-wing Danish People’s Party (DF) failed to gain either a mayoral position or the increased vote share it had targeted in Denmark’s local elections.

Published: 22 November 2017 16:19 CET

DF 'has not broken through' on municipal level: leader after election disappointment

Kristian Thulesen Dahl. File photo: René Schütze/Polfoto/Ritzau

DF also saw a significant fall in voting share on the 2013 elections, falling from 10.1 to 8.8 points and seeing its position as the country's third largest municipal party taken by the Conservatives in the process.

Leader Kristian Thulesen Dahl said the figures represented an honourable, rather than spectacular, result for the nationalist party.

“It was certainly not the result we had hoped for,” Dahl said.

“We are left with 223 members on municipal councils. That is a reduction by 32.

“It is not what our aim was. In that sense, it is obviously a real shame. But we’ll be back after this,” he continued.

Dahl said that it was “obvious” his party had not found the breakthrough it was looking for at municipal level.

»Det er bestemt ikke det resultat, vi kunne ønske os«.
– Kristian Thulesen Dahl, DF's formand. #kv17 #dkpol pic.twitter.com/78zVqD1AZR

— Politiken (@politiken) November 22, 2017

The nationalist party is the second largest in Denmark’s parliament, having won 21.1 percent of the vote in the 2015 general election, and had therefore looked to reduce the gap between local and national support.

“It’s a real shame to go a little bit backwards, since we had targeted more support. But we must not go into a coma as a party and have sleepless nights,” the DF leader said.

Dahl also said that it was his responsibility to make the party’s message clear at local level.

“It is my responsibility that we have made an effort to convince Danes that local politics is also about, for example, deportation strategies for migrants that have come to our country,” he said, referring to one of the party’s primary parliamentary concerns, namely its anti-immigration stance.

The result was unlikely to have any bearing on the next general election, Dahl said.

“It is very obvious that there is a big difference between parliamentary opinion polls and the result of yesterday’s elections. We have to accept that many Danes have said they are two different things,” he said.

“We will not re-evaluate our political viewpoint because we have suffered a 1.3 percent loss in a municipal election,” he added.