COPENHAGEN — Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democrats are staring down a potential political earthquake in Tuesday’s nationwide local elections.

Polls predict a drubbing in the very cities that once anchored the party’s power. But the biggest humiliation may come in Copenhagen, where the Social Democrats are poised to lose control of city hall for the first time in 122 years.

The revolt is driven by a familiar urban grievance: The skyrocketing cost of housing. After decades of turning Copenhagen from a gritty port into one of Europe’s most livable — and expensive — capitals, the party is now paying for the prosperity it helped create. But housing isn’t the whole story.

The election has also become a referendum on Frederiksen’s centrist makeover — a strategy that’s seen the party ally with economic liberal parties and take one of Europe’s toughest stances on migration.

Those moves may have shored up support in small towns, but in Copenhagen, they’ve cost the party its soul.

Frederiksen’s ability to remain in power since 2019 has been a success story for Europe’s beleaguered Party of European Socialists. But the crumbling of the Social Democrats’ dominance in Copenhagen is set to bolster those arguing the center-left needs to return to its working-class origins and focus on issues such as affordable housing and economic equity.

A city transformed, a voting base lost

The Social Democrats have been in power in Copenhagen for so long that when they first took control of the city in 1903, the current city hall building — a neo-renaissance palace “guarded” by stone bears and bronze dragons — was still under construction.

During the 20th century, the Social Democrats represented the blue-collar workers of the bustling port city. But anticipating the decline of industrial activity in Copenhagen, in the late 1990s the party began to focus on turning the Danish capital into a polished magnet for global companies, urban professionals and international students.

“The Social Democrats can take credit for transforming Copenhagen from a city without investments into a global model city with efficient infrastructure, strong educational institutions, green spaces, swimming in the harbor, an impressive gastronomic scene, and a high level of safety,” said sociologist and political analyst Carsten Mai.

But that metamorphosis has come with soaring real estate prices that have pushed many working-class families out of the city entirely and strained those who remain.

“The price of an average 80 square meter, owner-occupied apartment has increased by 20 percent over the past year and by 29 percent over the past four years,” said Lise Nytoft Bergmann, chief housing economist at Nordea Credit. “The sharp price increases have made it significantly harder for young people, singles, and low-income households to find housing in Copenhagen.”

Bent Winther, political commentator at the media company Berlingske, pointed out the housing crisis had been particularly detrimental for the Social Democrats’ voting base in the capital.

“The overall number of unionized, blue-collar and public sector workers who have historically voted for the party has declined over the last decades,” he said. “Those that are left — people who work in hospitals, kindergartens, etc — can’t really afford to live here anymore.”

Leadership blunders

The Social Democrats’ hold on Copenhagen has been weakening for years, partly as a result of problems with its leaders at the local level.

In 2020, Mayor Frank Jensen resigned after sexual harassment allegations came to light, and his successor, Sophie Hæstorp Andersen, was moved to a ministerial position in a 2023 maneuver widely believed to have been motivated by the party’s lack of confidence in her chances for reelection. Seasoned national politician Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil was brought in to revive the Social Democrats’ fortunes in the capital, but her stint as lead candidate has inadvertently accentuated the party’s disconnection with the electorate.

As Denmark’s minister for housing between 2022 and 2024, the Social Democrats’ candidate has struggled to disassociate herself from her own failure to address the escalating housing crisis. After calling for the construction of more affordable housing in Copenhagen during an electoral debate, Line Barfod, head of the far-left Red-Green Alliance, accused Rosenkrantz-Theil of ignoring the issue during her time in the national government and rushing to address it “in the final sprint of the campaign.”

The candidate also angered green-minded voters who had previously backed the Social Democrats by reversing the party’s support for measures to limit car access to the city, and abruptly promising to reintroduce parking spots to make life easier for drivers.

Elisabet Svane, political analyst for Danish newspaper Politiken, said that Rosenkrantz-Theil’s campaign had ambitiously incorporated policy changes calculated to make the Social Democrats stand apart from far-left parties that are able to take more hardline positions on green topics like parking.

“She took ownership of what was a traditionally conservative position, and argued that it’s a Social Democrat value to have the right to a car, to drive around,” Svane said.

But the strategy doesn’t appear to have paid off. Polls project that the left-wing groups pushing green policies and affordability issues will outperform the Social Democrats on Tuesday. Barfod’s Red-Green Alliance is expected to secure nearly one in four votes, while the Socialist People’s Party is projected to double its support to 22 percent.

Denmark’s Social Democrats, Prime Minister Frederiksen, and Rosenkrantz-Theil did not respond to POLITICO’s requests for comment.

Frederiksen’s centrism meets left-leaning capital

Beyond local missteps, the Social Democrats’ decline in Copenhagen is tied to urban voters’ broader dissatisfaction with the measures adopted by Frederiksen’s right-leaning coalition government.

While Frederiksen’s hawkish defense policies and support for Ukraine have proved broadly popular, her hardline stance on immigration has been far more controversial. The policies have played well in rural Denmark, but are alienating voters in the urban areas that have traditionally been the Social Democrats’ base — among them, Copenhagen, where non-natives make up 20 percent of the electorate.

“Everybody agrees we have to have an orderly policy on migration and fight Islamism, but what’s at issue is the government’s tone,” said Svane, who relayed the complaints of Social Democratic mayors in surrounding communities who said the party’s harsh rhetoric against foreigners was undermining its position at the local level.

Beyond the migration issue, political analyst Mai said the party was increasingly out of step with Denmark’s ever-more progressive urban electorate. “Many of them are focused on value-based issues such as social justice and the war in Gaza,” he said. “The Social Democrats have failed to adjust their policies to align with these voters.”

A warning for Europe’s center-left

Denmark and Spain are the only two major EU countries still governed by members of the Party of European Socialists, and the approaches taken by their leaders are frequently contrasted.

While Frederiksen has embraced centrism, bolstered defense spending, and cracked down on migration, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has taken the opposite tack, forging a “progressive coalition” with left-wing parties, prioritizing social spending over military budgets, and adopting a more welcoming posture toward migrants.

Political commentator Winther said Frederiksen’s approach had been successful in clamping down on the far-right in Denmark, “because she sucked the oxygen out of their argument by taking such a hard line on the key issue of migration.” But, he added, the party’s rightward drift under her leadership had “created confusion about what it actually stands for.”

That’s a challenge in a city like Copenhagen, which is “now composed of a lot of young people attracted by our big universities, and some quite rich people who can afford to both stay in the city and have more left-wing values.”

Denmark must hold a general election within the next year, and losses in Copenhagen and other Danish cities could put pressure on Frederiksen to change course.

The dominant narrative in Europe is that far-right forces are steadily advancing by campaigning on cost-of-living issues that establishment parties appear to be incapable of addressing. But Tuesday’s election in Copenhagen is notable because the likely winners are unabashedly left-wing forces that have embraced topics such as the housing crisis. The development mirrors Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani’s recent, headline-grabbing victory in New York City, which was keenly watched by Europe’s leftists.

Nicoline Kristine Ryde, a 27-year-old actress who lives in Copenhagen, summed up the mood by saying the Social Democrats simply aren’t “cool” anymore.

“I respect how Frederiksen handled the corona crisis, and the Social Democrats are still good on stuff like elder care, but for the rest, it just feels like they moved away from the social politics that have made this country great,” she said. “They just don’t feel like a socialist party anymore.”