BY FAIR VOTE CANADA
In 2025, Canadian voters went to the polls in the shadow of Donald Trump’s threats to our sovereignty. Economic fears and uncertainty loomed large.
A few days ago, voters in Denmark also went to the polls, following a tumultuous period marked by Trump’s threats to take over Greenland.
As in Canada, economic issues were top of mind for Danish voters.
The elections in Canada and Denmark couldn’t have been more different. Choices In Denmark, with proportional representation, voters had a vibrant array of choices. A range of parties across the political spectrum were competing for seats that any of them could win.
Eight televised debates gave voters a good look at what each of the parties were proposing.
Denmark’s TV2 ran a program called “The Political Assembly”, where all the party leaders spent a weekend together. Voters watched party leaders in 1-1 policy conversations, debates and casual social activities, like music trivia.
One of the most watched shows in Denmark, it was markedly successful in engaging the whole country – including young viewers – in the election and democracy.
In Denmark, voters know that every vote really counts, no matter who they vote for or where in the country they live.
Voters are free to cast ballots based on what policy ideas or leader they most support, confident that their votes will increase the strength of those ideas in Parliament. A whopping 99.4% of voters cast ballots which elected representation the voter asked for. 84% of Danish voters showed up to vote.
In Canada’s last election, by contrast, under a winner-take-all system, many voters felt they were left with only two real choices. With first-past-the-post, about 45% of Canadian voters cast ballots that elected no-one. (This was slightly better than usual – in most Canadian elections over 50% of voters elect no-one).
Many were compelled to vote “strategically” – to try to block a party they feared or disliked.
For voters in swaths of the country, even a “strategic” vote was an exercise in futility. Voters in safe seats know the outcome before they go to the ballot box, because the same party could run a toaster and win. Regional results that reflect all the people who live there In Denmark, instead of electing just one MP per riding in winner-take-all contest, local MPs are elected with proportional representation in multi-member ridings.
MPs are elected based on the strength of voter support for them in their own region. This means in every part in Denmark, urban and rural, voters elected MPs from parties across the political spectrum.
In Canada, by contrast, a single party can sweep every seat in a region, leaving all other voters, even large minorities, with no representation whatsoever.
This kind of mass exclusion, where voters are shut out and entire regions can be left without a voice in government, fuels resentment and exacerbates division.
In 2015, the Liberals won 32/32 seats in Atlantic Canada. In 2021, the Conservatives won 14/14 seats in Saskatchewan.
In 2024, researchers found that in recent decades, the urban-rural divide has “grown more dramatically in majoritarian electoral systems with few parties – like in the US, the UK, and Canada…” Cooperation, representation and welcoming new ideas In Denmark, no single party will ever be handed all the power with a minority of the vote.
In Denmark’s 2026 election, 12 parties earned seats, including parties on the left, right and centre.
Forty-eight percent of Denmark’s MPs are women, compared to just 30% in Canada.
The average age of an MP in Denmark is 43.9 years, compared to an average age of 52.3 in Canada.
Denmark’s thriving multi-party system means that a broad spectrum of voices are represented in the Danish Parliament – offering new ideas, working to improve legislation on committees, and delivering much-needed critiques of government bills.
Contrast this with Canada’s 2025 election, where thanks to first-past-the-post, Canada’s perpetually under-represented smaller parties were nearly wiped out.
As CBC pundit Chantal Hebert stated on election night:
“This is what a two-party system looks like.”
In Canada today, two parties – one on the centre-right and on the other on the right – dominate all of the discussions in Parliament.
As Althia Raj noted in the Star, Canadians are not even hearing about serious problems with legislation from a centre-left perspective, because there’s no party in Parliament with the numbers or funding to even raise the issues effectively.
A system that gives a near-monopoly to two parties, and moves us closer to two-party system, is not what the vast majority of Canadians want. Forming government and how Parliament works The Canadian media’s reporting on the 2026 Denmark election makes much of the fact that no single party is the “clear winner”. (“Denmark’s election ends in a political mess” reads one Canadian news headline, for example).
This is a natural perspective for those who see single party domination, with one strong leader in charge, as a democratic ideal to aspire to.
But in an age of multi-party politics, this is not how governments in most OECD countries work:
In Denmark, with proportional representation, cooperation and seeking common ground is deeply embedded in the political culture — and it works. The 2026 V-Democracy Index, which ranks hundreds of countries in the world on over 600 attributes of democracy, just ranked Denmark the strongest democracy in the world.
Not only is Denmark the top-ranked democracy in the world, Denmark is also #4 in the World Competitiveness Rating for economic growth and government efficiency, the third Happiest country in the world, #1 on the Climate Change Performance Index, and #1 on Transparency International’s Index for the least corrupt country.
But what about government formation? As negotiations are underway, the next Danish government could be a coalition of the left-leaning parties working with the Moderate Party, the right-leaning parties working with the Moderate Party, or, as in 2022, a grand coalition including parties from left to right.
Some media harp on the fact that it can sometimes take “weeks” after the election to form a government.
It’s worth remembering what the parties are doing during those weeks.
They are talking to each other – intensely and seriously – about every major issue in Denmark.
They are exploring what solutions they have in common.
In the end, they are developing a plan that has majority support to tackle the biggest issues in the country.
Imagine if our parties spent a couple of weeks doing something like that.
With first-past-the-post in Ontario, we couldn’t be farther from it.
The Ford “majority” government – elected with 43% of the vote in an election with 45% voter turnout – only opened the legislature so other parties could speak for 51 days in all of 2025.
Most of that time in the legislature was spent with the PCs ramming through bills the other parties had no say in and didn’t agree with.
In Denmark, by contrast, every piece of legislation is passed with the agreement of several governing parties representing a genuine majority of voters.
But the parties in a governing coalition often seek even broader input and support for legislation than their own government.
Every year, it’s common for some parties on the opposition benches to support the government’s budget – because they had a voice in creating it.
In 2020, during the pandemic, nine parties in Denmark, including the conservative party, worked together to pass the strongest climate legislation in the world.
Over the past year, Denmark’s Social Democratic Prime Minister, Mette Fredericksen and her coalition partners stood firmly against Donald Trump’s Greenland threats.
As Fredericksen pointed out on the campaign trail, strong leadership and collaboration go hand in hand. “Perhaps it’s not that crazy,” she said, “to have a Prime Minister who wants us to work together”.
Fair Vote Canada is a national citizens’ campaign for proportional representation.
