Denmark’s PM Frederiksen suffers election setback after standing up to Trump over Greenland

Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen suffered an election setback as her left-leaning bloc appeared to have fallen short of winning enough votes to form a government, following a campaign clouded by U.S. President Donald Trump's threats to annex Greenland.

Frederiksen's Social Democrats received the most votes and were seen winning 38 seats in Denmark's 179-seat parliament, results published early Wednesday showed, compared with 50 seats four years earlier. It reportedly marks the party's worst election result since 1903.

The left-leaning grouping, or "red bloc," was seen taking 84 seats, six short of the 90 required for a majority, while the right-leaning group, or "blue bloc," secured 77 seats.

Denmark's Frederiksen told supporters in Copenhagen that forming a government would be "difficult" and sought to downplay the decline in her party's popularity after several external shocks.

"We've had to deal with war, we've been threatened by the American president and in those almost seven years we've gone down 4 percentage points, I think that's okay," Frederiksen said, according to Reuters.

The election outcome sets the stage for tough coalition talks over the coming weeks, with Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen's center-right Moderates, which won 14 seats, seen emerging as a kingmaker.

"We're standing in the center. Don't sprint out towards the corner flags. We're standing there in the middle. That's where the game is interesting. Come and play with us," Rasmussen said, according to a CNBC translation.

The prime minister had called the snap vote months earlier than expected, seeking to secure a third successive term and capitalize on popular support after standing up to Trump's push to take control of Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory.

Political parties in the Scandinavian country largely focused on domestic issues during the election campaign, including the state of the economy, clean drinking water and food and fuel prices.

The future of Greenland, by contrast, was less prominent given that broad agreement exists regarding its place in the kingdom.

Lykke Friis, director of Denmark's Think Tank Europa, said the fate of Greenland and Copenhagen's stance on Russia's invasion of Ukraine "did not play a role at all" in the election outcome.

"The core issues were, I mean, drinking water and also animal welfare and these are issues that are not very good for the Social Democratic party," Friis told CNBC's "Europe Early Edition" on Wednesday.

"I think one would also have to remember that although she is bruised now, Mette Frederiksen, it is actually quite impressive to win now three elections in a row. That does rarely happen in European politics," she added.

Greenland was thrust into the center of a geopolitical firestorm at the start of the year when the U.S. president, who has long advocated for control of Greenland, renewed his interest in the territory.

Trump said at the time that the island was vital for U.S. national security and frequently cited concerns about Russia and China's Arctic influence.

The issue ratcheted up trans-Atlantic tensions and rattled the NATO military alliance, with Denmark's Frederiksen warning that the world order as we know it was now over.

Trump eventually defused tensions over his desire to make Greenland part of the U.S., saying in late January at the World Economic Forum that he had reached a "framework of a future deal" that would accommodate U.S. interests in the long term.

Even so, Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen described the vote as the most important in the island's history, saying the territory still finds itself in a "serious situation."

Speaking to AFP on Monday, Nielsen said: "We are in a time where we have a superpower trying to acquire us, take us, control us."