How the mighty have fallen.
Just a few short years ago in 2015, Dansk Folkeparti was a party with serious momentum.
The right-wing party had just enjoyed a historic result at the General Election that year, garnering over 21 percent of the votes – more than traditional powerhouse Venstre.
But now, for the first time, fledgling right-wing party Nye Borgerlige has usurped DF as the leading right-wing party in Denmark – attracting 7.7 percent of voters in a recent YouGov poll for BT tabloid, compared to DF’s hamstrung 6.6.
“Wow. To put it mildly, the poll follows a tendency that we have seen since we got into Parliament. We’ve had a gradual rise in pretty much all polls and I’m very pleased,” Nye Borgerlige leader Pernille Vermund told BT.
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Lesson: Take the power!
DF’s woes began following the 2015 election when, instead of assuming the reins of power, the Kristian Thulesen Dahl-led party decided to take a backseat and put Venstre boss Lars Løkke Rasmussen in charge of a Blue Bloc alliance.
DF’s decision not only plunged it into a downward spiral that persists today, but it also led to the formation of Nye Borgerlige just months later that year.
At the 2019 General Election, Nye Borgerlige made it into Parliament at its first attempt – securing 2.4 percent of the votes – while support for a beleaguered DF shrank to just 8.7 percent.
Many attributed DF’s failure in 2019 to Socialdemokratiet’s cunning ploy in the build-up to the election. By hardening its immigration policies, it lost many of its voters to Left Bloc allies whilst attracting DF supporters in their droves.
