On Sunday’s EU parliamentary election, 52,346 Danish citizens chose to cast blank votes, which according to a researcher from the University of Copenhagen is a new record. An analysis from Statistics Denmark reveals that this number represents 2.1 percent of the total 2.5 million votes cast. The researcher Kasper Møller Hansen stated on the social media platform X, that this number of blank votes is a “Danish record”. For comparison, 32,516 voters cast blank votes in the previous EU parliamentary election in 2019. Additionally, 5965 votes were declared invalid this year due to reasons such as drawings or writing on the ballot papers, which is a decrease from 8658 invalid votes in 2019. Voter turnout in Denmark also dropped from 66.1 percent in 2019 to 58.2 percent this year. One possible explanation for the increasing number of blank votes could be the absence of the People’s Movement against the EU on the ballot this year. The party received 3.7 percent of the votes in 2019, which was not enough to secure a seat. A total of 15 Danish representatives need to be elected to the European Parliament, which has a total of 720 members. The final results with personal vote counts are expected to be published on Monday. In this election, Alternativet was the only party that did not secure a seat, despite receiving 2.7 percent of the votes. The 2024 EU parliamentary election marked the 10th time Danish voters participated in an EU election since the first one in 1979. SF became Denmark’s largest party this time with 17.4 percent of the votes, securing them three seats. The Social Democrats followed with 15.6 percent and also three seats, while Venstre received 14.7 percent, equivalent to two seats. The Moderates, which is the third party in the SVM government, obtained 5.9 percent of the votes and got a single seat.

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