After slim victory, Danish PM to form broader government

The outgoing Prime Minister met Queen Margrethe to hand in her resignation at 1530 IMT.

A day after scoring a narrow election victory, Denmark's Social Democratic Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen tendered her resignation on Wednesday to begin the process of forming a new, broader government.

Accustomed to leading minority governments, the Social Democrats — the largest party in parliament with 50 of 179 seats — now want to govern across the traditional left-right divide.

The Prime Minister presented her government's resignation in order "to enter into negotiations to form a broader government and that will probably take a while," political scientist Rune Stubager, a professor at Aarhus University, told AFP.

Ms. Frederiksen's left-wing bloc, which includes five parties plus three seats from the autonomous territories Greenland and the Faroe Islands, won a majority of 90 seats, compared to 73 for the right and far-right, and 16 for the centre.

The outgoing Prime Minister met Queen Margrethe to hand in her resignation at 1530 IMT, which formally set the ball rolling for her to start negotiations with other party leaders on the make-up of the new government.

Having led the Social Democrats to their best election outcome since 2001, gaining two seats and securing over 27% of the vote, Ms. Frederiksen enters the negotiations from a position of strength.

Up until the final moments of the vote count, it appeared as though the left bloc would lose its majority, a scenario which would have made the newly formed centrist Moderates party kingmaker.