Danes began voting on Tuesday in general elections, with Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen seen as the favourite after standing up to US President Donald Trump over Greenland.
The latest polls give the left-wing bloc, for which Frederiksen is the self-proclaimed candidate, a nine-seat lead over the right-wing bloc, but neither side is projected to win a majority of the 179 seats in Denmark's parliament, the Folketing.
Frederiksen, a Social Democrat who has been in office since 2019, has been praised for her leadership after fending off Trump's repeated demands to annex Greenland, a Danish autonomous territory he claims the United States needs for national security reasons.
"The alternatives (to Mette Frederiksen) are worse," 24-year-old student Freja Strandlod told AFP after casting her vote in central Copenhagen, just after polls opened at 8:00 am (0700 GMT).
"People may not really like her, but they see her as the right leader," Elisabet Svane, political analyst at Danish newspaper Politiken, told AFP.
Frederiksen, who had "a prime minister you can count on" as one of her campaign slogans "is a unifying figure in a world full of insecurity, and Danes are quite anxious -- there's Greenland, Ukraine, (and mystery) drones" that flew over the Scandinavian country last year, Svane said.
The four overseas seats held by Denmark's two autonomous territories -- two for Greenland and two for the Faroe Islands -- could tip the balance if the election result is very close.
The centrist Moderate party, led by Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, a two-time former prime minister, could also prove decisive.
"I am not a candidate for prime minister, but I have said that I would very much like to take the lead in trying to create a basis for what a government might look like," Lokke Rasmussen told news agency Ritzau.
- Greenland -
In Greenland's capital Nuuk, the campaign has generated more interest than usual, with more than 20 candidates standing.
"I think this election will kind of show us the direction going forward," said Juno Berthelsen, a member of Greenland's local parliament and leader of the Naleraq party, which wants to cut ties with Denmark as soon as possible.
Several of the party's members have met with the Trump administration.
Greenland's main political parties all want independence from Denmark, but Naleraq's rivals favour a more measured process.
Greenland's Business Minister Naaja Nathanielsen, a candidate for the left-wing IA party, said fear of the United States had been central to the campaign in Greenland.
"Due to the fact that the US has shown such aggression, you would find a bigger interest in really trying to push the Greenlandic narrative in the Danish parliament," she said.
- 'New beginning' -
In Denmark, the row over the vast Arctic island has however not been central in the campaign.
In the wealthy nation of six million people, the campaign has instead focused on domestic issues, including inflation, the welfare state and high nitrate levels in water from agriculture.
"I think that the centre government has not ensured clean water in Denmark. They have not ensured that we have invested in welfare instead of taxation reliefs," Pia Olsen Dyhr, leader of the socialist Green Left, told AFP after casting her voting.
In a country where the far right has heavily influenced policy since the late 1990s, immigration has also been a hot topic, with the Social Democrats advocating even tighter regulations.
Frederiksen has also defended as "fair" a proposal to deny non-essential health care to people of foreign origin who threaten medical personnel.
Three populist parties are also in the running and opinion polls see them garnering around 19 percent of the vote.
The most established of those is the far-right Danish People's Party, which slumped in the 2022 election but has seen an upswing in opinion polls.
"I want a new beginning for Denmark, and that requires a strong Danish People's Party," party leader Morten Messerschmidt told AFP after casting his vote in Copenhagen.
Polling stations in Denmark close at 8:00 pm, with exit polls expected to be published just after.
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