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MAP: Which Danish areas were most EU-friendly in referendum?

The Local Denmark
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MAP: Which Danish areas were most EU-friendly in referendum?
A map showing the percentage of people in Denmarks constituencies who voted in favour of ending the EU defence opt-out.

On Wednesday, an overwhelming majority of Danes, almost 67 percent, voted in favour of joining the EU's common defence policy, 30 years after opting out. It was the clearest result of all nine referendums on EU issues so far. We take a look at the results across the regions.

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This interactive map shows the percentage of voters in each constituency who voted in favour of joining the EU's common defence policy. The data is taken from Denmark's Statistic when votes had been counted but there may still be some slight adjustments to the data.

Each constituency had a majority of yes votes, in favour of scrapping the EU defence opt-out. 

In the constituencies Gentofte and Rudersdal, four out of five voters put a cross by "yes," according to figures from KMD, which operated the referendum’s electronic result count.

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The constituency with the lowest percentage of yes votes was Frederikshavn in North Jutland, followed by Esbjerg By in Southwest Jutland. Here, 41.7 and 40.9 percent voted "no", respectively.

 

The Frederikshavn constituency, which covers Læsø and Frederikshavn Municipality, was the constituency where the fewest voted yes. The largest proportion of EU-critical voters were also found in the Lolland constituency, the Esbjerg City constituency and the Kalundborg constituency, which also covers Odsherred Municipality.

A total of 32,807 people voted with a blank space on Wednesday. This equates to approximately every 85th voter, corresponding to approximately 1.17 percent of all voters. In the 2015 vote, 46,100 people voted blank.

Although Wednesday’s referendum was the clearest result of all nine referendums held in Denmark on EU issues, the turn out was the second lowest of the nine votes.

65.8 percent of voters went to the polls, equating to 2.8 million people, according KMD. Only once before has voter turnout been lower, in 2014 when 55.9 percent of those eligible to vote went to the polls. In 2015, the most recent EU referendum, it was 72 percent.

The highest turnout this year was in the constituency Rudersdal, where 76.6 percent of people voted and Egedal, which had a 73.9 per cent turn out.

At the other end of the scale, Bispebjerg had the lowest turn out, with 57.1 percent, followed by Brøndby with 57.3 percent.

According to election researcher Kasper Møller Hansen from Copenhagen University, the referendum on Wednesday follows a tendency for lower turnout in Danish elections.

“I'm surprised it falls so much. But we are in a development where turnout falls not just for referendums, but also in, for example, the local elections last year”, he told newswire Ritzau.

"If the people do not want to be heard, the referendums lose their legitimacy. That is perhaps one of the most important things we need to learn from this turnout.

"There are several Danes who have turned their backs on democracy by staying at home", he said.

READ MORE: What will decision to end EU defence opt-out change for Denmark?

 
 

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