(SBU) LOCAL ELECTIONS YIELD SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE

UNCLAS COPENHAGEN 000524 SENSITIVE SIPDIS STATE FOR EUR/NB E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV DA SUBJECT: (SBU) LOCAL ELECTIONS YIELD SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE (U) SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED; PROTECT ACCORDINGLY. NOT FOR INTERNET DISTRIBUTION. ¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY: Danes went to the polls November 17 to elect 98 municipal and 5 regional councils. At the broadest level, the results were a wash, and turnout was down (65.8 percent, versus 69.4 at the 2005 local elections). The biggest gains in share of the vote went to the opposition Socialist People's Party (SPP) and the right-wing Danish People's Party (DPP). Despite obtaining a smaller share of the vote than last time, the main opposition Social Democratic Party (SDP) can claim victory, as it emerged with the most votes, the most mayors, and mayors of all four biggest cities. (The public elects council members, who then choose the mayor from among themselves. The SPP's strong showing helped the SDP - a larger party - win more mayorships.) The leading government-coalition party Venstre suffered a small loss in share of the vote, producing a historically low total of mayors; its results would have been worse if not for the DPP's improved showing. Venstre's coalition partner the Conservative People's Party improved its share of the vote marginally. In general, local elections are not/not reliable predictors of national elections. END SUMMARY. ¶2. (SBU) LEFTIST SPP THE BIG WINNER: The Socialist People's Party (SPP) and its leader Villy Soevndal confirmed their status as the hottest thing on Denmark's political scene: the SPP almost doubled its share of the vote since the last local elections in 2005 (from 7.4 to 14.5 percent). This helped the leading opposition party SDP increase its total of mayor positions from 46 to 52, despite a drop of 3.6 percentage points in share of the vote (from 34.3 to 30.7): the public elected members of councis, who will elect mayors from among their number Parties quickly negotiated deals at local level As the SDP remains the largest party at local evel, it will have the most mayors. ¶3. (SBU) PP SAVES THE DAY FOR THE RIGHT: The DPP, which s much more centrist on local issues than nationalones, increased its share of the vote from 5.9 to8.1 percent. That did not win it any mayor positions, but saved the day for the right-of-center. Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen's Venstre party, the largest in parliament, lost 2.7 percentage points (from 27.5 to 24.8),but this was less than predicted. Even so, the result was loss of eight mayor positions, yielding a historically low total of mayors for the party. This will inevitably be an issue at Venstre's annual convention this weekend. The junior partner in Denmark's governing coalition, the Conservative People's Party, raised its share of the vote slightly (from 10.3 to 11.0 percent),but lost the mayor's position in the fourth-largest city, Odense. ¶4. (SBU) NIGHT OF LONG KNIVES: As expected, the results indicate that local elections in Denmark are decided primarily by local issues, personalities and relationships. Election-night lived up to its traditional nickname "night of the long knives" as negotiations for mayor and committee-chair positions produced some odd bedfellows. In a number of municipalities, the rightist parties joined with the leftist SPP to gang up against SDP mayors; elsewhere, the DPP and other rightists fell in behind an SDP candidate. On the new Greater Copenhagen Regional Council, everybody ganged up to oust the incumbent chair, who is from the SDP. ¶5. (SBU) COMMENT: Pundits and partisans will spend the next several days reading the election results in various ways to claim victory or call winners and losers in accordance with their own agendas, but as a rule, local elections in Denmark are not/not reliable indicators of national elections, and these seem to be no exception. The SPP's strong showing will undoubtedly boost optimism within its ranks; it was already seen as the hottest party in the country. But in the larger scheme of things, its gains are of limited usefulness as long as they come largely at the expense of its national ally the SDP and the seriously-struggling Social Liberal (aka Radical Left) Party: these three left-of-center parties and the far-left Red-Green Alliance suffered a combined loss of 0.1 percentage points compared to a net gain of 0.5 percentage points for the right-of-center Government-DPP alliance - in other words, at the broadest level these elections were a wash. FULTON