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How many foreigners can vote in Denmark’s local elections?

If you are a foreign resident in Denmark, you are likely to be able to have a say in upcoming municipal and regional elections – regardless of whether you are an EU national.

Published: 2 November 2021 17:26 CET
Local election placards in Denmark. Over 400,000 foreign residents are eligible to vote in the elections, including many from outside the EU.
Local election placards in Denmark. Over 400,000 foreign residents are eligible to vote in the elections, including many from outside the EU. Photo: Keld Navntoft/Ritzau Scanpix

Over 400,000 foreign citizens who live in Denmark – 414,419 to be exact – are eligible to vote in municipal and regional elections on November 16th, according to figures from the interior ministry.

Of the 414,419 international residents who can vote, 221,331 are from EU or Nordic countries. As such, 193,088 non-EU and Nordic residents are also eligible to vote.

The total number of eligible voters (Danes plus foreigners) for the elections is 4,675,225, according to the ministry figures, which were correct as of November 1st.

This means foreign residents account for around 1 in 11 eligible voters.

Unlike in general elections – in which only Danish citizens can vote – EU, Norwegian and Icelandic citizens over the age of 18 with a permanent address in Denmark are entitled to vote in municipal and regional elections.

Additionally, foreign citizens over 18 who have residency permits and have lived in Denmark for four years or more prior to the date of the election also qualify to take part in the poll.

British citizens who registered as resident in Denmark no later than January 31st, 2020 and have lived in the country continually since then also have the right to vote.

UK nationals who registered residence in Denmark after this date (and thereby after the UK left the EU) must fulfil the requirement to have lived in Denmark for at least four years to be able to vote in the local elections.

READ ALSO: How to vote as a foreign resident in Denmark’s local elections

Despite the high number of foreign residents who can vote in local Danish elections, a much lower proportion of foreigners cast ballots compared to Danes.

At the 2017 municipal elections, only 32.1 percent of eligible foreign residents voted, compared 74 percent of Danes. That gave an overall turnout of 70.6 percent.

Those numbers come from an analysis from the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Political Science.

Denmark residents from newer EU countries, including Romania and Bulgaria, were among the nationalities with the lowest turnout, the analysis found.

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POLITICS

Founder of far-right Danish People’s Party to retire from politics

Pia Kjærsgaard, the woman who built the far-right Danish People's Party into the kingmaker of Danish politics, transforming the country's immigration debate, has announced her retirement from parliament.

Published: 13 September 2024 17:01 CEST
Founder of far-right Danish People's Party to retire from politics

The 77-year-old, who stepped down from the leadership of her party in 2012 after 17 years at the helm, said in an interview on Friday that she would cease to be an MP when the current parliamentary term ends in 2026.

“You have to go when you are loved and respected. I feel very loved by my supporter base and by the party and also by a good part of the population,” I think it’s fair to say Kjærsgaard said in an interview on the TV2 channel. “So the time is now, after 40 years at [the parliament in] Christiansborg.” 

 
Kjærsgaard was elected as an MP for the now defunct Progress Party in 1984, leading the party for ten years between 1985 and 1995, when she left to found the Danish People’s Party. 
 
After the party became the third largest in parliament in the 2001 elections, Kjærsgaard forced the centre-right coalition led by Anders Fogh Rasmussen to push through a drastic tightening of immigration law, which her party boasted made Denmark “Europe’s strictest” country for immigration. 
 
Kjærsgaard has frequently generated controversy, accusing foreigners of “breeding like rabbits”, arguing that the 9/11 attacks did not represent a clash of civilisations as only one side was civilised, and accusing Muslim migrants of having “no desire whatsoever to take part in Danishness”, and of having “contempt for everything Western”. She has said that Islam “with fundamentalist tendencies” should be “fought to the highest degree”, condemning the religion as “medieval”. In 2020, she tried to blame minority communities for a city-wide outbreak of Covid-19 in Aarhus.

She was reported to the police in 2002 for referring to Muslims as people who “lie, cheat and deceive” in her party’s weekly newsletter, but was never prosecuted. 

The Danish People’s Party’s current leader, Morten Messerschmidt, had warm words for his party’s founder following her announcement. 

“Pia has not only been a colleague and a friend, but also an inspiration to me and many others,” he wrote on X. “Her unwavering commitment, fighting spirit and courage have characterised Danish politics for several decades.” 

Since Kjærsgaard stood down in 2012, support for the once powerful party has collapsed, with its share of the vote falling from 21 percent in the 2015 election to just 2.6 percent of the vote in the last national election in 2022.  

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