(AP) Denmark will hold a general election on June 5, the prime minister announced Tuesday, with immigration a hot-button issue for voters.
Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, who heads the Liberals, has been in power since 2015. He later formed a coalition with the smaller Liberal-Alliance and the Conservatives. But it depends on the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party and its 37 seats to muster a majority in the 179-seat parliament.
Overall, Danes have supported the government’s tough stance on immigration after the 2015 migration crisis in which mostly Muslim asylum-seekers sought refuge in European countries, including Denmark.
Political experts say people who traditionally voted for the populists are drifting mainly to the Social Democrats, which have moved toward supporting a stricter immigration policy. Voters also appear to be turning away from the Danish People’s Party because of fraud scandals involving European Parliament funds.
