As in an episode of the political drama “Borgen”, Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen is fighting to stay in power in a parliamentary election on Tuesday that could well crown an outsider.

In a political landscape split into 14 parties, polls suggest neither main bloc can secure a 90-seat majority in the Folketing, Denmark’s 179-seat parliament.

The left ‘red bloc’, led by Frederiksen’s Social Democrats, is 49.1 percent in polls and represents 85 seats, compared with 40.9 percent or 72 seats for the right-wing ‘blue’ bloc.

“It’s about winning the middle, because those who get to the middle get the prime minister’s seat,” said Kasper Hansen, a professor of politics at the University of Copenhagen.

The new party at the political center is the Moderates, founded by former Liberal Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen.

The polls show his party will win 10 percent of the vote, or 18 seats, a fivefold increase since September – much to the surprise of political analysts.

And Rasmussen, who has solid political experience, has refused to pledge support for either bloc before the election.

Party colleague Jakob Engel-Schmidt said they were “ready to work with the candidate who enables the broadest cooperation around the center to implement necessary reforms”.

And what the moderates want to reform is healthcare and pensions.

In a bid to win over the often less loyal centrist constituency, Frederiksen’s Social Democrats have announced that they intend to govern across traditional political divides. They, too, have spread the moderates’ idea of ??a coalition government assembled in the middle.

“It’s in direct contrast to what she said before and I think it’s because she feels she might lose power otherwise,” Martin Agerup, director of liberal think tank CEPOS, told AFP.

Led by two other prime ministerial candidates – Conservative Soren Pape Poulsen and Liberal Jakob Ellemann-Jensen – the right wing has not extended the same hand.

Without a clear majority, long negotiations may have to be conducted before a government is formed after the election that could ultimately favor Lokke Rasmussen.

“He’s a wild guy in negotiations,” said Agerup.

“He can basically operate until someone is scared enough to point at him and say, ‘Look, yes, you could be prime minister’.”

It’s a situation like in the hit political drama series “Borgen”, named after the seat of the legislature and executive in Denmark, in which the leader of an imaginary center party subtly maneuvers her way through to become the prime minister.

But outside of the fiction, the Social Democrats, the largest party in the country’s political power, “try to play the card in uncertain times that they’re the right party,” according to Rune Stubager, professor of political science at Aarhus University.

Their handling of the Covid-19 pandemic has been widely applauded, despite a stumble when they ordered a huge mink herd of an emergency culling country over fears of a mutant strain of the novel coronavirus. That turned out to be illegal.

With the economy in turmoil, they have since introduced measures to help Danes cope with soaring prices.

They propose a carbon tax on agriculture and a public sector wage increase, while their allies have mainly advocated protecting biodiversity and supporting children and the vulnerable.

The current government is negotiating with Rwanda to set up a center to house asylum seekers while their applications are being assessed.

There is a strong consensus in the political landscape to maintain restrictive migration policies, so the issue is rarely up for debate.

“There is a clear consensus in Parliament for strict immigration policies,” said Hansen.

The populist, anti-immigration right is expected to gain more seats in this election, but it is split into three distinct parties that collectively command 15.5 percent of the vote in polls.

“We also have to protect our society and that means we can’t just open our borders,” Bjarke Rubow Jensen, a 35-year-old anthropologist and Social Democrat supporter, summed up the Danish mindset to AFP.