Denmark will vote in what is expected to be a close general election on Tuesday where the survival of incumbent Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen will depend on a new center party in the face of the far right.

Polling stations are open from 8am to 8pm (7am to 7pm GMT) and the first results are expected around 9.30pm in this election, which has been sparked by the ‘mink crisis’ that has gripped the country for over a year.

A party that supports the minority Social Democrat government has threatened to oust it if it doesn’t call an election to win back voters’ confidence after a decision – which turned out to be illegal – minked the country’s roughly 15 million people over fears of a Cull kill mutant strain of novel coronavirus.

Recent polls give the left-wing “Red Bloc,” led by Frederiksen’s Social Democrats, 47.1-49.1 percent versus 40.9-43.6 percent for the “Blues,” an informal alliance of liberal and conservative parties backed by three populist parties parties.

With neither bloc likely to win its own majority, they will not be able to govern without the help of the Moderates, a centrist party founded this year by former Liberal Party leader and two-time Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen , who takes part in the elections 9.3 to 10 percent of the vote.

“That’s the most interesting part. If there is no majority, the moderates must form a government,” Rune Stubager, professor of political science at Aarhus University, told AFP.

Both left and right have repeatedly appealed to Lokke Rasmussen, who has campaigned for health care reform.

Frederiksen has floated the idea of ??a coalition government she will lead, saying she is also ready to discuss healthcare reforms.

Liberal party leader Jakob Ellemann-Jensen, meanwhile, urged Lokke Rasmussen to join his former party colleagues on the right.

“If you want the things you dream about, grown in our old backyard together, come home,” Ellemann-Jensen said during a recent televised debate.

After an election campaign dominated by climate concerns, inflation and health, almost a quarter of voters went into election day undecided, according to surveys.

“There’s quite a lot of volatility among Danish voters, about 40 percent change party,” said Stubager.

First-time voter Antesa Jensen told AFP she was hesitant.

“I don’t know who I’m voting for yet,” said Jensen.

The 40-year-old American has just received Danish citizenship after what she called a strenuous process, underscoring the Scandinavian country’s restrictive foreign policy.

Under the protection of the prosperity and social cohesion of the Nordic welfare state, Denmark has advocated increasingly strict migration policies for over 20 years.

The incumbent Social Democrat government is committed to a “zero refugee” policy and is working to set up a center to house asylum seekers in Rwanda while their applications are being processed.

With most parties supporting the restrictive policies, the issue is rarely up for debate.

The climate, on the other hand, is a major concern for Denmark’s 5.9 million inhabitants.

On Sunday, around 50,000 people, including the prime minister, gathered for the “People’s Climate March” in Copenhagen.

“I think this election is very important for what’s going to happen to Earth in the future,” 23-year-old college student Esther Ronn told AFP.

“It is important that climate is the top priority for politicians and voters in Tuesday’s vote,” she added.

The left has promised a biodiversity law and the government intends to introduce a carbon tax on agriculture, a measure supported by most other parties.

On the right, the Liberal Party is committed to developing green solutions, while the far-right New Right is open to building nuclear power plants, of which Denmark has none.

In total, no fewer than 14 parties are competing for the 179 seats in the Folketing, Denmark’s parliament.

Four seats are reserved for the overseas autonomous regions of Greenland and the Faroe Islands.

Voter turnout is traditionally high in Denmark. In the 2019 election, 84.6 percent of the approximately 4.2 million voters went to the polls.