Copenhagen---Denmark's centre-left government and riht-wing opposition are neck-and-neck in the polls ahead of Thursday's general election, with Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt staging a major comeback thanks to a resurgent economy.
The election campaign has been dominated by the economy and Danes' cherished cradle-to-grave welfare state, as well as immigration, the traditional battle horse of the far-right Danish People's Party (DPP).
On Tuesday, a poll published in the daily Jyllands-Posten credited the right-wing bloc with 49.9 percent of votes and the centre-left bloc with 50.1 percent. In another survey in the broadsheet Politiken, the right was seen winning 50.2 percent and the centre-left 49.8 percent.
"With Helle Thorning-Schmidt, there is a 'prime minister effect': people see her as the head of government more than (opposition leader) Lars Lokke Rasmussen and that works in her favour, but it doesn't mean she's going to win," said Danish political science professor Drude Dahlerup of Stockholm University.
"The two issues that are going to be decisive in the election are (the) welfare (state) and immigration," said Kasper Hansen, a political science professor at the University of Copenhagen.
"If it's going to be welfare, the Social Democrats and the Social Liberals will have an advantage. If it's going to be immigration which is decisive in the voter's mind" the opposition will win, he predicted.
Thorning-Schmidt called the election on May 27, the same week her government declared an end to a protracted economic crisis that saw house prices fall by 20 percent as Danish households struggled with the world's highest debt burden, calculated as a percentage of income.
In May, the government raised its growth forecast for 2015 to 1.7 percent and to 2.0 percent for 2016.
Thorning-Schmidt, 48, has disappointed many left-wing voters by cutting taxes and keeping in place some of her right-wing predecessor's controversial benefit cuts.
But the resurgent economy helped her bloc claw back around seven percentage points from the opposition in opinion polls within days after the election announcement.
By successfully focusing the debate on the welfare state, she managed to give her side a narrow lead in the two weeks that followed.
Lars Lokke Rasmussen, who led the country between 2009 and 2011, shed support over a series of minor scandals and for allegedly exaggerating how little a Danish worker on social benefits stood to gain from accepting a job.
AFP
