Surprise Winners

Gaining around 30 percent of the votes in a surprise victory, the performance of the center-right Demokraatit (the Democrats) shocked even their own leader, Jens Frederik Nielsen. Demokraatit are the least eager of the five pro-independence parties that contested the election, favoring gradual progress toward an eventual referendum by adopting business-friendly policies and creating a low-tax environment. Those who opted for them did not vote to leap into Donald Trump’s open arms.

A little over 1,500 votes behind Demokraatit, ending on roughly 25 percent, Naleraq (Point of Orientation) is the most staunchly pro-independence of the main parties. While also ruling out becoming part of the United States, it favors closer ties with it, and its candidates are brought together more by a desire for an immediate independence referendum than by anything else. Naleraq’s increased vote share may reflect discomfort with Denmark as a colonial power and desire for an independence referendum to be held, but a vote for its candidates does not necessarily indicate support for any particular approach to international relations.

Mirroring the trend of anti-incumbency seen in numerous elections in recent years, the parties of the current governing coalition, Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA, or Community of the People) and Siumut (Forward), saw their vote shares collapse. Both parties lost around 16 percent of the total vote compared to the last elections in 2021, with Siumut’s leader resigning after the party recorded its worst result since Greenland gained home rule in 1979. Inuit Ataqatigiit’s leader, Múte Egede, lost the office of prime minister on his thirty-eighth birthday.

If independence was the main motivator for this election, then both parties have suffered from hedging their bets. Inuit Ataqatigiit refused to commit to a short time frame on a referendum, while senior figures including Aki-Matilda Høegh-Dam, one of Greenland’s two representatives in the Folketing (Danish Parliament), left Siumut for Naleraq because of their former party’s equivocation on independence.

In Greenland’s electoral system, where voters cast their vote for individual politicians as well as the broader party, Høegh-Dam received more votes than her new party leader, Pele Broberg. Her strong personal brand, brought about in part by her time in the Folketing, likely contributed to Naleraq’s success.

Issues at Stake

However, independence was not the only motivating factor, and any conclusions made about it and relative support for other policies must be strongly qualified. There is scant opinion polling data in Greenland, and the electorate is tiny.

Out of a total population of approximately 56,000 people, only 40,369 were eligible to vote, and only 28,620 did so. This is roughly the same as the population of William Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, or the number of people living per square kilometer in Manhattan. In Greenland, every single vote matters, and a massive defeat only requires the desertion of a couple of thousand voters.

Greenland’s electoral uniqueness comes not only because of its tiny population. Towns are separated from each other by huge distances. With the completion of the territory’s first road between settlements still years away, domestic policy needs to cater not just to the capital, Nuuk, but to the smaller settlements.

Naleraq was originally set up to do just this, with a focus on fishing and hunting rights. With the noise around independence swamping much of the international debate, parties must still continue to deliver for those outside the center. IA and Siumut seemingly failed to do this while in government, losing much of their vote share outside of the larger settlements to Naleraq in particular.

Regarding the shape of the next government, the election results alone do not give too clear an indication. Greenlandic politics is reliant on the formation of coalitions, with Jens Frederik Nielsen indicating his willingness to work with any of the other parties in the aftermath of the vote. A lot remains to be decided, which will determine the next four years of Greenland’s domestic and foreign policy, and which of the main elements of Demokraatit’s policy platform it is able to focus on.

Free-Market Visions

Demokraatit, as the election winners, would need the support of either Naleraq or Inuit Ataqatigiit in a two-party coalition to nudge them over 50 percent of the vote to a majority of seats in the Inatsisartut (Greenlandic Parliament). Their leader, Jens Frederik Nielsen, has indicated his desire to form a broad coalition and unite the Inatsisartut in response to Donald Trump’s continued pressure. However, any coalition would likely be shaped by Demokraatit and one of those two other parties.

Working with Naleraq would likely result in a government that supports the extraction of rare earth minerals and fossil fuels. Demokraatit’s policy platform states that the last government was an “anti–raw materials coalition. . . . They have cut themselves off from making money from oil and gas. . . . We won’t get rich from that. Quite the opposite.”

The controversial uranium mine at Kuannersuit in southern Greenland would also be up for debate once more, having been cancelled by the last government. One of the few places where Demokraatit or Naleraq failed to displace IA was Narsaq, a settlement near the mine that would be directly affected by its development and whose inhabitants clearly retain a degree of support for the party that halted the project.

A Demokraatit/Naleraq coalition would also likely result in the repealing of the controversial fisheries law introduced by the last government, which, among other changes, introduced catch quotas for private companies, but not for the publicly owned Royal Greenland. The law did not receive the support of any of the opposition parties, and the chairman of the Greenlandic parliament’s Fisheries, Hunting, and Agricultural Committee at the time of its passing was not reelected.

A coalition featuring Demokraatit and IA would be more aligned on the question of independence, with both parties in favor of more measured progress toward separation from Denmark. However, it might have trouble reconciling IA’s socialist domestic policies with Demokraatit’s preference for free-market economics.

Demokraatit are committed to lowering taxes, and their website includes a reference to the old idea of “growing the pie.” Their party program declares that they “do not consider economic inequality to be a problem.” Mentions of the health service in their election program focus on recruitment of staff and the notion of “efficiency.” However, as Greenland is, on the whole, a relatively liberal polity, even a party of the free market affirms the necessity of free health care.

Demokraatit’s election still represents a significant change domestically. Their policy program suggests a negative attitude toward the state, with privatization potentially high on the agenda. As Greenland moves toward independence, the party may weaken the state by selling off key industries, in the process making an independent Greenlandic government less able to resist the overtures of wealthy private companies.

Such overtures would most likely come from US firms and their ally in the White House. Billionaires including Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are investors in KoBold Metals, a mining company that began exploring Greenland for critical minerals in 2022.

Neither Washington nor Copenhagen?

On the international stage, neither coalition would respond to Trump’s advances with anything other than rejection. While the importance of the election for the outside world, shown by the presence of the Danish security services in order to monitor and counteract potential foreign influence, is clear, this was not a vote where the idea of joining the United States was a realistic possibility. All parties start from the principle that Greenland decides what happens to it, something that would certainly not be guaranteed under US supervision.

Several commentators had suggested in recent weeks that the most likely outcome of these elections would be a government that sought greater independence within the Kingdom of Denmark, gradually taking over responsibilities for different parts of the state, rather than an immediate split. This seems to have been borne out by the results, more or less describing Demokraatit’s attitude for the next few years at least. The party now has a mandate, whatever coalition it ends up forming, to further reshape Greenland’s relationship to its colonizer.

Preelection, Naleraq leader Pele Broberg wrote for US News laying out his party’s position, and said of Trump that “no other leader in Denmark or the EU has expressed such strong support for Greenlandic independence.” That may be the case, but it is support with strings attached.

Trump’s reaction to the results was to call Jens Frederik Nielsen a “very good person” and suggest to the NATO secretary general Mark Rutte that the military alliance should be involved in an American annexation of Greenland. Both current and future Greenlandic prime ministers predictably met this suggestion negatively, and despite Trump’s efforts to call the election result “very good for us,” the overall picture is difficult to spin as a win for the US president.