Socialdemokratiet’s Identity Crisis: Destroyed by Sleeping with Enemy

Ascar Ashleen

Writer

March 30, 2026
9:59 am

Socialdemokratiet’s catastrophic local election result, its worst in over a century, has sparked fierce debate about whether the party’s collaboration with the right in the SVM government destroyed its identity. Lars Olsen, once considered the party’s unofficial chief ideologist, blames the coalition and a voter exodus to both SF on the left and nationalist parties on the right.

Lars Olsen does not mince words. The author and debater, who for years shaped Socialdemokratiet’s ideological direction from the outside, calls the November 2025 kommunalvalg result a catastrophe. Speaking on DR’s Deadline program, he pointed to one culprit above all others: the SVM government.

According to Olsen, Socialdemokratiet went to the ball with the bourgeois parties. Or as he put it more bluntly, the party went to bed with the enemy. That blurred their identity, he said. And it cost them votes, especially to SF.

The numbers back up his anger. Socialdemokratiet lost ground in 87 of Denmark’s 98 kommuner. The party surrendered København’s overborgmester post for the first time in over a century. SF’s Sisse Marie Welling took the capital by forming a broad coalition that included everyone from Enhedslisten to Dansk Folkeparti. That kind of political acrobatics used to be Socialdemokratiet’s specialty.

The Yellow Denmark Returns

Olsen sees a direct connection between Dansk Folkeparti’s strong showing on Sjælland and Socialdemokratiet’s collapse in the same areas. He drew comparisons to the 2015 folketingsvalg, when DF dominated large swaths of the country and turned the electoral map yellow.

The pattern is not coincidence, Olsen argued. Dansk Folkeparti had what he called a cannon election on Sjælland. Their strongest areas are on Syd and Vestsjælland, where the yellow Denmark is re-emerging. When you add up Dansk Folkeparti, Danmarksdemokraterne, and Borgernes Parti, they are actually larger than Socialdemokratiet in those regions.

I have watched this unfold from my desk in København for years. The warning signs were there. Socialdemokratiet tried to outflank the nationalist right on immigration and integration policy. They thought they could steal voters from DF while keeping their base intact. Instead, they alienated their left without winning back the right.

Squeezed From Both Sides

Valgforsker Kasper Møller Hansen described the election as worse than any analysis or prognosis predicted. He pointed to multiple factors, including the loss of prominent local figures like Birgit S. Hansen in Frederikshavn, where Socialdemokratiet dropped 31 percentage points. But the structural problems run deeper.

As Hansen noted, Socialdemokratiet’s core voters are getting fewer and fewer. Meanwhile, the new young generation is far more left oriented. The party moved right on values politics to compete with Dansk Folkeparti. It created an awkward position that satisfied no one.

The data confirms the squeeze. SF and Enhedslisten overtook Socialdemokratiet in København. There is no red majority left of S anymore. Even Danmarks Kommunistiske Parti picked up six mandates. On the other side, the blue bloc held or expanded ordførere positions despite vote losses for Venstre and Konservative, thanks to coalition dealmaking.

What Collaboration Costs

Olsen’s critique cuts to the heart of social democratic identity. For decades, the party defined itself against the right. It stood for workers, welfare, and solidarity. The SVM government required compromise with Venstre and Moderaterne, parties that historically opposed much of what Socialdemokratiet claimed to represent.

Those compromises might have seemed pragmatic in Christiansborg. Out in the kommuner, they looked like betrayal. When Socialdemokratiet backed policies indistinguishable from the right, voters on the left went to SF. When they tried to sound tough on immigration, voters who wanted that message went to parties that meant it.

The kommunalvalg results showed Socialdemokratiet losing voters to extremes rather than the center. That is not a positioning problem. That is an identity crisis. You cannot be everything to everyone. You cannot go to bed with your enemies and expect your friends to wait around.

I have covered enough Danish elections to know this: voters punish parties that blur their lines. Socialdemokratiet spent years telling voters it was different from the right. Then it governed with them. The result was predictable. The scale of the disaster was not.

Twenty six kommuner changed ordfører-parti. Thirty one new individuals took borgmester positions. Socialdemokratiet’s dominance, built over generations, crumbled in a single night. Olsen calls it a catastrophe. The numbers suggest he is understating the case.