University of Southern

The 2017 Danish regional elections and the victorious parliamentary parties

Kjaer, Ulrik

Published in: Regional and Federal Studies

DOI: 10.1080/13597566.2019.1689492

Publication date: 2020

Document version: Accepted manuscript

Citation for pulished version (APA): Kjaer, U. (2020). The 2017 Danish regional elections and the victorious parliamentary parties. Regional and Federal Studies, 30(3), 461-473. https://doi.org/10.1080/13597566.2019.1689492

Go to publication entry in University of Southern Denmark's Research Portal

Terms of use This work is brought to you by the University of Southern Denmark. Unless otherwise specified it has been shared according to the terms for self-archiving. If no other license is stated, these terms apply:

• You may download this work for personal use only. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying this open access version If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details and we will investigate your claim. Please direct all enquiries to [email protected]

Download date: 23. Sep. 2021 The 2017 Danish regional elections and the victorious parliamentary parties

Ulrik Kjaer, Dept of Political Studies, University of Southern Denmark ([email protected])

Manuscript accepted for publication in Regional & Federal Studies (vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 461-473. DOI:

10.1080/13597566.2019.1689492)

ABSTRACT Regional politics is not at the center of most Danes’ political attention, but at the 2017 regional elections more than seven in ten Danes showed up at the polls to vote in the five Danish regions. Although several regional lists and smaller nationwide parties ran at the elections, the established parties already represented in the national parliament conquered all but two of the 205 seats. This is not to say that the voters simply copied their national vote – almost three in ten voted for a different party at the regional elections than the one they would have preferred had they been voting at a general election.

KEYWORDS regional elections; local party systems; inter-level split-ticket voting; Denmark

The 2017 Danish regional elections

On November 21, 2017, local elections were held simultaneously in the five Danish regions and in the 98

Danish municipalities. According to the Local Election Act (2019), elections are to be held in regions as well as municipalities on the third Tuesday of November every fourth year. This means that the voters are handed two ballots when they come to the polls: one for the regional election and one for the municipal election. However, it is not a triple election, since the vertical simultaneity does not include the general election, i.e. the election for the Danish parliament Folketinget, which has its own four-year circle (see also

Bhatti and Hansen 2013).1 There are at least two consequences of the simultaneity of regional and local elections: 1) candidates running regional electoral campaigns have to fight for media and voter attention with their municipal counterparts – a battle they in most cases lose; and 2) although regional elections therefore often turn into low-information elections, the turnout for regional elections is quite high since many voters can vote twice for the cost of one visit to the polling station.

Even though general elections are not held on the same day, the nationwide political parties are indeed present at the regional elections, and although the electoral system is very open to newcomers, the parliamentary parties are massively represented on the regional ballots and in the regional councils. At the

2017 regional elections, healthcare was once again the dominating issue in the campaign, which should not come as a surprise since healthcare makes up 97 pct. of the regions’ budgets. Since the major parties running did not have very different standings on healthcare policy, the campaigns kind of turned into a question of political leadership and which party could offer the best candidate for the regional mayoralty to be elected indirectly by and among the regional councilors after the election. At the 2017 elections, the question of leadership was taken to a new level. The long-sitting chairman of Danish Regions (the interest organization of the five Danish regions) did not seek re-election, and since this position is filled by one of the regional mayors, it was even more important to conquer one of the regional mayoralties to be in the pool for this – in a Danish context – very powerful position.

The leadership question drew special attention in the Region of Southern Denmark where the regional mayor (from the Liberal Party) left office in the middle of the term to join the government, leaving a huge scandal concerning contracting out of ambulance services in his wake. His replacement, Stephanie Lose, also from the Liberal Party was running again – not only in the shadow of this scandal but also in a field of candidates that quite exceptionally for regional elections included one of the most renowned politicians in

Denmark, former minister of foreign affairs and former leader of the Socialist People’s Party, Villy Søvndal.

It was a minor surprise that the incumbent Stephanie Lose easily beat the new competition in this intensively media-covered electoral battle, but it was a major surprise that she, as the only regional mayor from the Liberal Party, was elected chairman of Danish Regions rather than one of the other four Social

Democratic mayors.

The selection of the chairman of Danish Regions marked the very end of the regional election process of

2017. The remainder of the article will focus on the main features of the regional elections. After introducing the electoral system of the Danish regions, the results of the 2017 regional elections in terms of turnout, seat distribution and who was elected will be presented. After these descriptions, the degree of nationalization of regional elections will be analyzed in terms of the congruence between the regional and the national party system and in terms of patterns of vote switching between regional and general elections.

Elections in the five Danish regions

The five Danish regions were established as part of a major structural reform decided by the parliament in

2005 and implemented in 2007 (Ministry of the Interior and Health 2005; Vrangbæk 2010; Bhatti and

Hansen 2013). The number of municipalities was reduced from 271 to 98, but the regional level was even more fundamentally changed as 14 counties (amter) were replaced by five regions (regioner). Unlike the counties, the regions cannot impose taxes (their revenue comes from state and municipal subsidies), and their task portfolio ‘only’ covers health care.2 The reason only is put in quotation marks is that the regions’ budget is quite large – close to a quarter of all public expenditures in Denmark. On average, the five regions

– Capital Region of Denmark (Region Hovedstaden), Region Zealand (Region Sjælland), Region of Southern

Denmark (Region Syddanmark), Central Denmark Region (Region Midtjylland) and North Denmark Region

(Region Nordjylland) – have more than 1.1 million inhabitants, see Table 1.

To prepare the new regions, the first elections for the five regions were held already in November 2005, so the 2017 elections were the fourth round of elections under the present structure (also including the regional elections of 2009 and 2013). The regional electoral system is built on proportional representation with each region forming a single multi-member district where the 41 regional councilors to be elected for each of the five Regional Boards are elected at large. Candidates must form lists to run, but only 50 signatures from eligible voters in the region are needed for the list to get on the ballot, and only one candidate is needed to form a list. Political parties as well as non-partisan lists can run and will be assigned a letter on the ballot. Parties qualified to run for the national parliament are assigned one letter for all regions, municipalities and national elections, which is often a part of their party logo. The voters can cast a vote for a list or a preferential vote for a candidate on the list (a little more than half the voters go for the second option, cf. Table 1). After the votes are cast, the seats are first distributed among the lists, including votes for the list and preferential votes for one of its candidates (apparantement is allowed) using

D’Hondt’s formula. In the second round of seat allocation, the seats won by the list are distributed among the candidates on the list according to the preferential votes. However, it is possible for the lists beforehand to announce that they do not run on an open but on a semi-closed list where the rank-order of the candidates on the list also plays a role (less than a fifth of the lists opt for the semi-closed format and only in a very few cases does it have an effect on who is elected). After the distribution of the 41 seats in each of the regions, the elected regional councilors elect their chair – the regional mayor – among them.

Danes turn out at regional elections

In short, Danes are great regional voters. As reported in Table 1, the turnout rate was 70.7 in 2017 (lowest in the Capital Region), which is not rare. Ever since the amalgamation reform in 1970, as a rule of thumb, seven out of ten Danes vote in local elections, whether municipal or regional.

*** Table 1 goes here ***

As Table 1 also shows, the turnout rate is approximately 15 percentage points below the turnout rate at the national election but equals the turnout rate at municipal elections (this pattern is consistent over time).3

This is somewhat paradoxical because a survey study conducted right after the elections shows that regional policy is not at all at the center of citizens’ political interest. Even though citizens are asked right after the electoral campaign for municipal and regional elections, regional policy and the political questions discussed at the regional level lose out to municipal and not least national policy (the pattern is consistent across regions): 36 percent of the Danes find national policy most interesting, 18 percent municipal policy,

8 percent foreign policy, and only 5 percent find regional policy most interesting (the remaining 33 percent find policy at the different levels equally interesting) (n = 4,977, see Kjaer and Hansen forthcoming).

As already speculated, the simultaneity of municipal and regional elections may boost regional turnout – some might go to vote in municipal elections and out of civic duty end up voting in the regional elections as well. When Reif and Schmitt identified second-order elections (1980), they asked for a focus on the number of invalid ballots, and Table 1 demonstrates that there are three to four times as many invalid ballots at regional than at national elections (and that this is far from the case at municipal elections). So at least some Danish voters tend to take regional elections less seriously than municipal election.4

The parliamentary parties won

The results of the 2017 regional elections are reported in Table 2, and at least two observations can be made: 1) the regional party system differs more from the national when the ballots are compared than when the parties that ultimately gain representation in the regional councils and in the national parliament, respectively, are compared; and 2) the aggregate results of the five regional elections are quite close to the national (and municipal) electoral result. These two features will be commented on in turn.

*** Table 2 goes here ***

Table 2 demonstrates that the ten nationwide parties with a designated letter (indicating that they are allowed to run for national elections) ran in all five regions and were joined by other nationwide parties that were not allowed to run for the national parliament where the threshold is not the aforementioned 50 signatures but a number equivalating the ‘cost’ in votes to obtain one seat in Folketinget (at the moment more than twenty thousand). These parties are in most cases very new parties (e.g. Tough Line (Stram

Kurs)) or old parties no longer in parliament (as Justice Party (Retsforbundet)), for which regional (and municipal) politics might serve as a potential incubator or respirator, respectively (see Kjaer 2012). Also, several regional parties running in only one region are on the ballot. In Region of Southern Denmark, a special case is The Schleswig Party (Slesvigsk Parti), the party of the German minority living north of the

Danish-German border. This regional party can by law run under the designated letter S, and it also runs in the four municipalities closest to the border. However, the number of parties elected is lower and it is almost exclusively the nine parties represented in the Danish parliament at the time of the regional elections that also conquer the 205 seats in the regional councils. Only in the Region of Central Denmark is their dominance broken as the Christian and a regional list called Better Psychiatry

(Psykiatrilisten) each won a seat.

When it comes to the regional mayors, the victory of the parliamentary parties is even more pronounced and concentrated on only two parties. After the elections, the regional councilors in each region elect a regional mayor among themselves (the official title is Chairman of the Regional Board

(Regionsrådsformand)). The regional mayor has limited formal power but is the only full-time paid politician in the region. The regional mayor has an office at the House of Region where the administration of each region is located and therefore often acquires considerable informal power (Dyhrberg-Noerregaard and

Kjaer 2014). As mentioned, after the 2017 regional elections, Stephanie Lose (Liberal Party) became regional mayor in Southern Denmark, and she was accompanied by Sophie Hæstorp Andersen (Social

Democracts) in the Capital Region, Heino Knudsen (Social Democrats) in Zealand, Anders Kühnau (Social

Democrats) in Central and Ulla Astman (Social Democrats) in the North. So, the two major parties, the

Social Democrats and the Liberal Party, shared among them the five regional mayoralties, which is not that surprising. All 12 regional mayors during the four terms the regions have existed in their present form have represented one of these two parties. In four of the regions, the same party has been in power for all four terms. In Zealand, the mayoralty has alternated between the two parties.

As for the persons elected for the regional councils (regionsråd), it should first be noted that competition for Danish regional council seats is high. As shown in Table 1, across regions, there are more candidates per seat in the regional than in the municipal and the national elections. The number of candidates is probably a too simple indicator for the well-functioning of democracy (Kjaer 2007) but a lack of candidates cannot be observed. The 205 regional councilors elected at the 2017 regional elections share socio-demographic traits with local politicians in many countries, including age – the average was 53,4 years for elected as well as candidates (Statistics Denmark 2018), and gender– 62 percent men compared to 38 percent women (see

Table 1). Among the candidates, only 32 percent are women, so in the Danish regions it can be demonstrated not only that ‘where women run, women win’ (Seltzer et al. 1997) but also that women tend to do better at the regional level than at for instance the municipal level (Eder et al. 2015). However, why women end up represented in slightly higher numbers at the regional than at the municipal (or national) level remains to be explained (see however Kjaer 2019 for a set of hypotheses).

How nationalized are the regional elections?

After the description of the key features of the 2017 regional elections, this part will evaluate how nationalized the elections are in terms of congruence between the regional and the national party system and the extent to which voters split their vote choice between regional and general elections. For the regional party system, this is summed up further in Table 3 where the number of parties running, and the number of parties elected, are compared to the national party system – the measure used is the index of party system nationalization suggested by Kjaer and Elklit (2010). The coinciding municipal elections are used as point of comparison. Table 3 demonstrates that on average, the electoral party system (the parties on the ballot) at regional elections is substantially less nationalized than at municipal elections, whereas the parliamentary party system (the parties represented in the regional councils) is substantially more nationalized than the municipal equivalent. The ballots at the regional elections are very long, but the parties in the regional councils are almost true copies of the group of parties in the national parliament.

*** Table 3 goes here ***

As pointed out, Table 2 also demonstrates that the aggregate electoral result from the five regions comes quite close to the national vote – in this case survey-based vote intentions since the regional elections were held between the national elections of 2015 and 2019. There are differences: for instance, the Danish People’s Party and the Red-Green Alliance did not get the share of votes they would have gotten in a national election, while the Social Democrats and not least the Liberal Party had better regional elections than suggested by their national support. These differences have been stable over time and are also found at the municipal level, cf. Table 2. The reason is probably that the importance of regional and municipal agendas varies among parties, and not all parties have local branches. However, the net differences in vote shares do not say anything final about how many voters vote for different parties at elections at different political levels (what has been denoted inter-level split-ticket voting (Elklit and Kjaer 2005)). To assess how widespread that phenomenon is, individual level data is needed. Table 4 reports results from the Danish

Local Election Survey 2017, and the data clearly demonstrates quite substantial inter-level split-ticket voting. Even though, as shown in Table 3, the parliamentary party system is close to identical at the regional and national levels, as many as 28 percent of the voters end up voting for a different party than they would have voted for had there been a national election the same day.

*** Table 4 goes here ***

The pattern is found across the five regions and mirrors the pattern for municipal elections. It cannot be determined based on the data whether the reason is that voters do not care very much about regional elections (and therefore vote more randomly) or take regional elections very seriously (and therefore cast a very sophisticated vote) (see also Campbell and Miller 1957). However, it can be concluded that for a large number of Danes, the regional vote is not a mere copy of their national vote, and therefore, even if the electoral results of regional elections are probably affected by changes in support for the political parties at the national level (Thomsen 1998), the regional elections are far from determined by national politics. In sum: the pattern of nationalization found at the regional level is equivalent to the pattern found at the municipal level in Denmark and has recently been described as ‘localized voting within a nationalized party system’ (Kjaer 2020).

Are Danish regional elections here to stay?

The Danish regional elections of 2017 are characterized by at least two somewhat paradoxical features.

First, regional politics seems not to be the Danes’ favorite – when asked, they find national, municipal and international politics more interesting – but still, seven out of ten vote in regional elections. There might be an element of civic duty in this behavior, and the regional elections probably benefit in terms of turnout from the simultaneity with municipal elections. Second, although the ballots were quite long and included the major political parties, nationwide parties that were no longer (or not yet) part of the national parliamentary party system and several non-partisan lists, the established parliamentary parties won almost all seats. The electoral party system is quite open with an extremely low threshold of running, but even so, the threshold of representation seems hard to pass for parties that are not established in the national parliament.

These features of the regional elections have been quite stable through the four rounds of elections held under the present regional structure, and there are no indications that the patterns described regarding the

2017 regional elections should change in the future. There is one very important exception to this assessment: In spring 2019, the minority government consisting of the Liberal Party, the Conservative

People’s Party and Liberal Alliance reached an agreement with the Danish People’s Party to abolish the regional political level and thereby any future regional elections. However, since there was no time to pass the legislation in parliament before the June 5 national election – and since the Social Democrats won the election and formed a new government – it seems that at least for now, the regions and the regional representative democracy were saved. However, whether regional elections will continue to be held in the long run in Denmark is yet to be seen.

Notes

1 Since the parliamentary term is not fixed (the four years are a maximum), local and national elections may coincide. However, this has happened only once, namely in 2001.

2 The regions do have minor tasks regarding regional development, environmental protection, and public transportation but more than 97 pct. of their budget are devoted to health care.

3 Table 1 demonstrates that the number of eligible voters is larger at local than at national elections, which is due to the different voting requirements at the two types of election for foreign citizens living in

Denmark (see Kjaer 2020).

4 At the 2014 EP election in Denmark, the percentage of invalid votes was 2.4 and therefore truly second- ordered being twice as high as the 1.2 percent at the national election, while the regional elections are then

“3,58-ordered” (see also Heath et al. 1999).

References

Bhatti, Yosef, and Sune Welling Hansen. 2013. “Denmark: The First Years of Regional Voting after

Comprehensive Reform.” In Regional and National Elections in Western Europe edited by Régis Dandoy, and

Arjan H. Schakel, 68–87. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Campbell, Angus, and Warren E. Miller. 1957. “The Motivational Basis of Straight and Split Ticket Voting.”

American Political Science Review 51 (2): 293–312.

Dyhrberg-Noerregaard, Niels, and Ulrik Kjaer. 2014. “Non-zero-sum Leadership Games: Is Facilitative

Leadership a Win-win?” International Journal of Public Administration 37 (4): 249–258.

Eder, Christina, Jessica Fortin-Rittberger, and Corinna Kroeber. 2015. “The Higher the Fewer? Patterns of

Female Representation Across Levels of Government in Germany.” Parliamentary Affairs 69 (2): 366–386.

Elklit, Jørgen, and Ulrik Kjær. 2005. “Are Danes More Inclined to Ticket Splitting than the Swedes and the

English?” Scandinavian Political Studies 28 (2): 125–139.

Heath, Anthony, Iain McLean, Bridget Taylor, and John Curtice. 1999. “Between First and Second Order: a

Comparison of Voting Behaviour in European and Local Elections in Britain.” European Journal of Political

Research 35 (3): 389–414.

Kjaer, Ulrik. 2007. “The Decreasing Number of Candidates at Danish Local Elections: Local Democracy in

Crisis?” Local Government Studies 33 (2): 195–213.

Kjaer, Ulrik. 2012. “Local Politics: Incubator or Respirator for Political Parties?” In Democracy, Elections, and

Political Parties, edited by Jens Blom-Hansen, Christoffer Green-Pedersen, and Svend-Erik Skaaning, 201–

209. Aarhus: Politica.

Kjaer, Ulrik. 2019. “Patterns of Inter-Level Gender Gaps in Women’s Descriptive Representation.” Lex

Localis – Journal of Local Self-Government 17 (1): 53–70.

Kjaer, Ulrik. 2020. “Local Elections – Localized Voting Within a Nationalized Party System”. In Oxford

Handbook of Danish Politics, edited by Peter M. Christiansen, Jørgen Elklit, and Peter Nedergaard. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

Kjaer, Ulrik, and Jørgen Elklit. 2010. “Local Party System Nationalisation: Does Municipal Size Matter?”

Local Government Studies 36 (3): 425–444.

Kjaer, Ulrik, and Sune W. Hansen. Forthcoming. ”Appendiks.” In KV17 – Analyser af kommunalvalget 2017, edited by Ulrik Kjaer, and Sune W. Hansen. Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark.

Local Election Act [Lov om kommunale og regionale valg]. 2019. LBK nr. 138, 07/02/2019. (available at: https://www.retsinformation.dk/Forms/R0710.aspx?id=206577)

Ministry of the Interior and Health. 2005. The Local Government Reform – In Brief. (available at: https://english.sim.dk/media/11123/the-local-government-reform-in-brief.pdf)

Reif, Karlheinz, and Hermann Schmitt. 1980. “Nine Second-Order National Elections – A Conceptual

Framework for the Analysis of European Election Results.“ European Journal of Political Research 8 (1): 3–

44.

Seltzer, Richard A., Jody Newman, and Melissa V. Leighton. 1997. Sex as a Political Variable – Women as

Candidates & Voters in U.S. Elections. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Statistics Denmark. 2015. The Folketing Election of June 18, 2015 [Folketingsvalget den 18. juni 2015].

Statistiske Efterretninger, Befolkning og valg 2015:3. Copenhagen: Statistics Denmark. (available at: https://www.dst.dk/valg/Valg1487635/other/2015-Folketingsvalg.pdf)

Statistics Denmark. 2018. The Local Elections of November 21., 2017 [Valgene til kommunalbestyrelser og regionsråd 21. november 2017]. (available at: https://valg.oim.dk/media/19045/valgene-til- kommunalbestyrelser-og-regionsraad-21-november-2017.pdf)

Thomsen, Søren Risbjerg. 1998. “Impact of National Politics on Local Elections in Scandinavia.”

Scandinavian Political Studies 21 (4): 325–345.

Vrangbæk, Karsten. 2010. “Structural Reform in Denmark, 2007–09: Central Reform Processes in a

Decentralised Environment.” Local Government Studies 36 (2): 205–221.

Table 1. The five Danish regions and their candidates and voters at the November 21, 2017 regional elections.

Regional Municipal National elections elections elections 2017 2017 2015 Capital Zealand Southern Central North Total Total Total Inhabitants 1,821,577 834,740 1,220,306 1,312,985 588,962 5,778,570 5,778,570 5,678,348 Eligible voters 1,431,888 661,853 964,017 1,028,714 469,578 4,556,050 4,554,614 4,145,105 Votes cast 966,428 475,602 695,961 748,020 333,674 3,219,685 3,226,583 3,560,060 Turnout (pct.) 67.5 71.9 72.2 72.7 71.1 70.7 70.8 85.9 Invalid ballots 37,951 23,069 32,758 31,016 14,681 139,475 50,562 41,073 Invalid ballots (pct.) 3.9 4.9 4.7 4.1 4.4 4.3 1.6 1.2 Valid ballots 928,477 452,533 663,203 717,004 318,993 3,080,210 3,176,021 3,518,987 Preferential votes 403,256 234,064 396,270 412,807 206,234 1,652,631 2,385,318 1,762,656 Preferential votes (pct.) 43.4 51,7 59.8 57.6 64.6 53.7 75.1 50.1 Number of candidates 358 246 276 259 247 1,386 9,596 799 Number of seats 41 41 41 41 41 205 2,432 175 Candidates / seat ratio 8.7 6.0 6.7 6.3 6.0 6.8 3.9 4.6 Women – running (pct.) 32.7 32.1 30.4 30.9 32.4 31.7 31.8 31.3 Women – elected (pct.) 39.0 41.5 36.6 29.3 43.9 38.0 32.9 37.1 Notes: Number of inhabitants in the regions is as of October 1, 2017. National elections do not include the elections of and . Sources: Based on Statistics Denmark (2018) for regional and municipal elections and Statistics Denmark (2015) for national elections.

Table 2. The five Danish regions and the results of the November 21, 2017 regional elections. Percentage of total votes (number of seats in parentheses) compared to the municipal elections held on the same day and vote intentions for national elections.

Regional Municipal “National elections elections elections 2017 2017 2017” Capital Zealand Southern Central North Total Total Total Nationwide parties w. letter A. Social Democrats 28.4 (13) 32.2 (14) 23.4 (10) 33.7 (15) 41.5 (18) 30.4 (70) 32.4 29.7 B. Social Liberals 8.0 (3) 4.2 (2) 3.6 (1) 4.1 (1) 3.1 (1) 5.1 (8) 4.6 6.0 C. Conservative People’s Party 11.2 (5) 5.9 (3) 4.5 (2) 3.4 (1) 8.5 (4) 6.9 (15) 8.8 6.1 D. New Bourgeois 1.4 (0) 1.6 (0) 1.2 (0) 0.8 (0) 1.0 (0) 1.2 (0) 0.9 2.2 F. Socialist People’s Party 6.3 (3) 5.7 (2) 13.6 (6) 5.4 (2) 3.4 (1) 7.3 (14) 5.7 5.5 I. Liberal Alliance 4.3 (2) 2.7 (1) 2.6 (1) 2.7 (1) 1.9 (0) 3.1 (5) 2.6 3.8 O. Danish People’s Party 8.1 (3) 14.3 (6) 10.9 (5) 7.9 (3) 8.9 (4) 9.7 (21) 8.8 12.5 V. Liberal Party 13.8 (6) 23.9 (10) 32.4 (14) 30.0 (13) 24.5 (11) 24.1 (54) 23.1 21.2 Ø. Red-Green Alliance 10.1 (4) 5.8 (3) 4.1 (2) 4.5 (2) 4.3 (2) 6.3 (13) 6.0 8.5 Å. Alternative 4.7 (2) 1.7 (0) 1.8 (0) 2.2 (1) 1.5 (0) 2.7 (3) 2.9 3.5 Nationwide parties w. no letter Christian Democrats 0.4 (0) 0.3 (0) 0.7 (0) 1.8 (1) 0.9 (0) 0.8 (1) 0.5 1.0 National Party 0.4 (0) - - 0.1 (0) 0.0 (0) 0.2 (0) 0.1 - Tough Line 0.1 (0) 0.1 (0) - - - 0.0 (0) 0.0 - Friends of the Schiller Institute 0.1 (0) - - 0.0 (0) - 0.0 (0) 0.0 - Justice Party 0.1 (0) 0.1 (0) 0.0 (0) 0.1 (0) 0.1 (0) 0.1 (0) 0.0 - 0.1 (0) - - 0.2 (0) - 0.1 (0) 0.0 - Communist Party 0.2 (0) 0.1 (0) - 0.1 (0) 0.1 (0) 0.1 (0) 0.0 - Regional parties w. letter S. The Schleswig Party - - 0.8 (0) - - 0.2 (0) 0.3 - Regional parties w. no letter 2.3 (0) 1.4 (0) 0.4 (0) 3.0(1) 0.3 (0) 1.7 (1) 3.3 - Total 100.0 (41) 100.0 (41) 100.0 (41) 100.0 (41) 100.0 (41) 100.0 (205) 100.0 100.0 Notes: As national vote is included the party respondents state they would vote for “if a national were held election tomorrow”. The only regional party without designated letter elected (in Region of Central Denmark) is named Psykiatrilisten. The Christian Democrats is accepted as a vote intention for national election, since it was assigned a designated letter to run at the national election before the regional elections (but after the deadline for having a letter assigned for the regional elections). Sources: Regional and municipal elections calculated from Statistics Denmark (2018), vote intention for the national election is based on the Danish Local Election Survey (n=4.848) (Kjaer and Hansen forthcoming) – see also Kjaer (fortcoming).

Table 3. The five Danish regions and the regional party system at the November 21, 2017 regional elections.

Regional Municipal National elections elections elections 2017 2017 2015 Capital Zealand Southern Central North Total Total Total Number of parties running/elected Nationwide w. letter – running 10 10 10 10 10 10 9.2 10 Nationwide w. letter – elected 9 8 8 9 7 8.2 6.2 9 Nationwide w. no letter – running 7 4 2 6 4 4.6 0.7 0 Nationwide w. no letter – elected 0 0 0 1 0 0.2 0.0 0 Regional w. letter – running 0 0 1 0 0 0.2 0.0 0 Regional w. letter – elected 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.0 0 Regional w. no letter – running 15 4 5 4 1 5.8 1.9 0 Regional w. no letter – elected 0 0 0 1 0 0.2 0.4 0 Index of party system nationalization Electoral 0.31 0.56 0.56 0.50 0.67 0.52 0.75 1.00 Parliamentary 1.00 0.89 0.89 0.82 0.78 0.87 0.66 1.00 Notes: In the columns on the total of regions and total of municipalities, the mean across the five regions and the ninety-eight municipalities, respectively, are included. Included under regional parties without designated letter are regarding municipal elections municipal parties without a letter. Under national elections, the 16 candidates running as independents are excluded (they received in total only 3,066 votes). Index of party system nationalization is calculated as row1/(row1+row3+row5+row7) for the parties running (electoral) and row2/(row2+row4+row6+row8) for the parties elected (parliamentary) – see Kjaer and Elklit (2010). Sources: Based on Statistics Denmark (2018) for regional and municipal elections and Statistics Denmark (2015) for national elections.

Table 4. Inter-level split-ticket voting at the Danish regional elections 2017.

Region Capital Zealand Southern Central North Total National vote = regional vote = municipal vote 59.8 64.5 56.8 58.5 63.1 59.9 National vote = regional vote ≠ municipal vote 16.3 14.2 10.9 7.6 10.1 12.1 National vote ≠ regional vote = municipal vote 10.6 6.3 10.5 9.6 8.7 9.5 National vote = municipal vote ≠ regional vote 8.9 7.6 13.3 14.5 11.1 11.2 National vote ≠ regional vote ≠ municipal vote ≠ national vote 4.4 7.4 8.5 9.8 7.0 7.3 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 n = 1,216 705 890 833 461 4,105

Local-national split (row 2+3+5) 31.3 27.9 29.9 27.0 25.8 28.9 Local-regional split (row 2+4+5) 29.6 29.2 32.7 31.9 28.2 30.6 Regional-national split (row 3+4+5) 23.9 21.3 32.3 33.9 26.8 28.0 Note: As national vote is included the party respondents state they would vote for “if a national were held election tomorrow”. Source: Calculations based on the Danish Local Election Survey 2017 (Kjaer and Hansen forthcoming), see also Kjaer 2020.