1964 1960 1964 1960 Conservatives 535,100 639,100 13.1 15.7 = 246 Centre Party (formerly Arrarians) 558,900 567,800 - “13.7 W456"! = 1.1 Liberals 682, 300 700,300 16.7 17.2 -0.5 Social Democrats 1,953,800 1,969,800 47.9 48.4 -0.5 Communists 217,300 187 ;100 © 533 =~ 406 $O0T
Two new parties contested the elections: the Christien Democratic Front (which received 71,200 votes, a quarter of which were probably from the Social Democrats), and the Citizens! Front (which received 59,500, three quarters of which probably came from the Conservatives). None of these figures take into account.the 180,000 postal votes which tend to favour the Conseravtives.and Liberals. The preliminsry estimate (i.e. before the postal votes were counted) gave the Social Democrats 117 of the 233 seats, but this dropped to 113 when the postal votes were counted. Thus the Social Democrats are four short of the 117 neede@i for an overall majority.
The par lost 34 of its votes in the northern rezions of the country. This was because of the disatisfaction with the Governnent's proposals to deal with the lack of employment in that area (there is a steady exodus from north to south). On the other hand the Social Democrats did well in the growing cities in the south, where the large housing estates are traci tionally social Democrat. The Social Denocrats also lost votes to the Communists in paper industry centres, where the workers were upset by the low increases in wages awarded in the annual collective agreement.
In Denmark, the Social DomOcPats only hold 76 out of the 175 seats in Parliament; the voting fieures being:
Seats as follows (previous in brackets): Social Democrats 76 (76); Radicals 10 (11); Conservatives 32 (32); Liberals 38 (38); PSP 10 (11); tnd., 5 (6). The loss by the PSP of a seat was probably due to the 9,000 votes gained by a pacifist party.