As Denmark votes in Wednesday’s general election, the country faces what looks like a historic swing to the left. The right-wing coalition government headed by the Liberals’ (V) Lars Løkke Rasmussen is unpopular with voters, and its main parliamentary allies in the nationalist Danish People’s Party (DF) are set to slump to defeat. The election could result in the most left-wing parliament since the 1970s.

The May 26 election for the European Parliament already gave some idea of what we can expect in the June 5 contest. In last weekend’s vote, the DF slumped from 26 to 10 percent; polls for Wednesday’s election predict that this right-populist force will lose almost half its seats in the Danish parliament. Overall the European elections yielded 43 percent for parties backing Denmark’s present right-wing government, and 54 percent to the opposition. Within this, there was a breakthrough first seat for the Red-Green Alliance (now standing independently, having historically run as part of a left-wing anti-EU alliance) while the Socialist People’s Party (SF) also gained one seat thanks to its 13 percent of the vote.

Even if we can’t simply map these results onto the Danish general election, there are promising signs for the Left (broadly defined): SF and the Red-Green Alliance are polling a total of almost 20 percent, while the biggest winners are likely to be Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democrats. All this suggests a voter backlash against the retreat of the welfare state we have seen in recent years, especially since the 2008 crisis. However, under the surface of this promise, there are also real reasons to worry.